Conclusion Solutions: Racial and Socioeconomic Equity in Special Education

Special education is not “broken,” but it needs reworking if it is to give every student an equal opportunity. Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are the ones who are most affected by the shortcomings of the special education system and that is due largely to racial prejudice and socioeconomic disparities within the special education assessment process, differences in school funding, and disciplinary action. There is a plethora of potential solutions for these issues; below are a few significant strategies to build upon:

The assessment process:

As was analyzed in our article Special Education’s Assessment Process: It’s Variables and It’s Subjectivity, school administrations’ placement decisions can be influenced by bias against BIPOC. They may misinterpret a student’s classroom behaviors as special needs and refer them to special education where other problems can arise. One mechanism to amend the overidentification of BIPOC students is sound data collection.

Data collection on the racial and socioeconomic makeup of referred students has the potential to create oversight on those who refer at a high rate. Nora Gordan, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, explains that this method could help, but also potentially lead to referral “caps” which could result in underidentification (2017). Gordan suggests preventive measures be taken in addition to oversight to try and tackle the dilemmas within the current system: “We need to work towards better identification practices in special education. We also need to help states and districts collect and report race and ethnicity-specific rates. But forcing states to establish uniform standards is dangerously inconsistent with the IDEA mandate of a free and appropriate public education for all. When identifying another student pushes a district over a risk ratio threshold, the district faces a clear incentive to under identify - that is, to withhold services from - children who already face a broad array of systemic disadvantages… Instead, we should focus on building a better safety net and reducing child poverty. Luckily, policymakers have plenty of proven levers: expand income support for families as the EITC, reduce food insecurity while improving maternal health and birth outcomes through a robust SNAP, maintain children’s access to Medicaid, and continue to work towards improving the equity and quality of general education” (Gordan, 2017, para 17).

Gordan’s suggestions would help maintain students’ wellbeing and relieve teachers from potential misplacements of students, in essence creating preventive measures and avoiding special education referral all together.

Researchers Beth Harry, Janette Klingner, and Elizabeth Cramer of Columbia’s Teachers College present how lacking parental involvement can be in the assessment process for Students of Color. When caregivers are cut out of the process and administrators do not welcome their input, information can be easily left out or overlooked which could prevent proper services to be put in place (Cramer et al, 2007). Harry, Klingner, and Cramer also showcase how useful home visits can be. Even though home visits may fall outside the job descriptions of school staff, home visits provide a great deal of insight that cannot be gotten via conferences at school - especially if there is a language barrier or parents have responsibilities that cause frequent time conflicts. In other words, if there is a major difference between how a student behaves at school versus at home, there may be another reason for their behavior and parental input can help explain this phenomenon.

All in all, the assessment process needs to be monitored at a greater extent than it is now. Methods such as data collection, proven, preventive measures, and parental involvement can help the referral process work for the student, decreasing unnecessary referrals and taking some of the pressure off teachers.

Funding:

Since many schools in BIPOC districts do not have the means to cover the cost of special education, there needs to be more federal funding to meet their needs. IDEA has been underfunded since the beginning (Blad, 2020). As documented by EdWeek’s Evie Blad (2020), special education’s allocation per student is approximately 46,000 dollars, a good 30,000 dollars higher than general per-pupil costs of about 16,000. Additional services for special education vary between states, but in most cases, special education is underfunded. To meet student’s needs, there has to be at least a 15 percent increase in per-pupil expenditure, which would require an additional 2.04 billion dollars to IDEA’s current budget of 13.6 billion (Blad, 2020). These funds would be designated for direct special education services (i.e. special education teachers and aides, classroom materials, etc.), but not services that account for basic needs, such as Medicaid and SNAP (Blad, 2020). These services would also need additional investment, as they help special needs and general education students alike.

California is one state that has taken it upon itself to address special education’s federal funding short-comings. In the 2020-21 budget, California has included a new formula to calculate the allocation for the state’s special education services by school district. The old formula, which hasn’t been updated since the early 2000s, funded districts based on how many students a district had overall, not just the number of students in special education (Jones, 2020). The new formula will now be adjusted to account for the cost of every district’s special education program. This includes providing funding based on districts’ numbers of students and their special needs, which vary in cost, depending on disability-type (Jones, 2020). The new budget also accounts for additional student services such as teacher training and workgroups to research alternative diploma pathways for students with disabilities (Jones, 2020). These adjustments to state budgeting are costs that California is able to meet within its own state budget, but states with fewer funds cannot. Thus, to help the most amount of students, there needs to be more federal allocation. The allocation would account for the resources that IDEA is meant to provide as well as programs such as Medicaid and early childcare that can meet all students’ needs.

All around, there needs to be more funding from the federal government. California has made great strides to make up for the deficit, but special education’s students, especially those of Color, need more attention all across the country.

Discipline:

As discussed, disciplinary measures are taken out of hand when it comes to students with behavioral issues. To combat this, harmful “Zero Tolerance” policies need to be eradicated from school systems. This would help those who struggle with behavioral disabilities as well as general education students. Special education professor Reece Peterson talks about a restorative approach to counteract problem behaviors and allow for students to take charge when classmates’ behaviors get in the way of schooling (Butrymowicz et. al, 2014). “Discipline needs to move to a more “teaching-based” approach so that students explicitly learn correct behavior. If [a student] has a disability that has characteristics of being aggressive and acting out, we can’t simply punish him for that. We would want to provide some sort of service or intervention for it.’”

Specifically, this restorative methodology refers back to the restorative justice practices of indigonous peoples, such as the Maori, who rely on meditation and cooperation rather than discipline (WeAreTeachers, 2019). Educators of the We Are Teachers blog outline the three tiers of restorative justice and how they are put into practice:

1. Prevention:

Students meet in a “sharing circle” to discuss feelings and goals for the class. Students develop learning agreements and outline acceptable classroom behaviors. In doing this, students develop agency within their own classroom, opening up peer-to-peer communication and a mutualistic relationship with the teacher.

1. Intervention:

When problem behaviors arise, students are brought together to discuss what went wrong and what measures can be taken together to restore harmony. The teacher is not the one leading the conversation, merely acting as mediator. Again, students develop agency and learn how to work out conflict in a non-escalating way.

1. Reintegration

This tier focuses on students who have been outside of the classroom for an extended period of time, such as for suspension. Here, the student is given a variety of resources to catch up and reduce feelings of isolation. It emphasizes accountability but prioritizes acknowledgment of the struggles that a student might be going through.

In allowing for students to assess their behavior and coordinate with one another about how to forgive and move forward, students can better understand each other and reason on how to make their school environment work for everyone. In better understanding where their classmates are coming from and how their behavior might be affected, the classroom environment becomes less hostile for students who might otherwise be reserved about their feelings/vulnerabilities and act-out because of them. In understanding each other's backgrounds, students are more able to empathize and relate to one another. In a restorative approach, the burdens of discipline are relieved from teachers and administrators, there are fewer conflicts which allows for more teaching time, and students are provided real-world life skills to address root-problems and compromise.

One school district that has seen immense success with this type of program is Oakland Unified School District, an area with a majority BIPOC population and high rates of student misbehavior (WeAreTeachers, 2019). As We Are Teachers states, Oakland’s pilot school saw a decrease in violent outbreaks amongst students and a drop in suspensions by a “whopping” 87 percent in the three years since it was first applied in 2006 (2019).

As outbreaks are minimized between peers, those with emotional disabilities will stand out. This, of course, is normal - there are plenty of students with emotional disorders that need help. With non-disabled students more able to deal with their issues, restorative justice might allow for misidentification rates to go down, opening up resources for those who really need it.

Students should never be punished for behaviors they cannot always control. Zero Tolerance and the disproportionate punishments that come with it have resulted in little to no accommodations for those who cannot help their behavior which has fed into the stigma against emotional disorders and upheld the school-to-prison pipeline. As I see it, Zero Tolerance does nothing to address the root causes of student’s misdemeanors, so there needs to be an establishment of a kinder, more inclusive methodology to problem behavior. Restorative justice has the potential to get us there, so I hope its merits are taken seriously in the near future and at-risk students can go forth better prepared for whatever lays ahead.

Conclusion:

I hope you have learned a lot about the successes and pitfalls of the special education system in its relation to the dynamics of this country’s relationship with race and socioeconomics. Clearly, what is being done today is not helping the majority of those within the system, particularly those of Black, Hispanic, and Native American descent. It is troubling to see the disparities within special education and how they have been around since the founding of IDEA legislation, but I have not given up hope. Above, I have outlined several of the proposed solutions to the disparities within the system, but I have not addressed how those in general education perceive their special needs peers.

The truth is, I can only speak from my personal experience at Rooftop Alternative School. I once thought my special education classmates to be inferior to me, simply for the reason that I was able to sit still in class and work faster on math and reading. I did not accommodate their needs because I thought my classmates would slow me down and hold me back. This thinking was wrong on so many levels, but I was also a just kid, a very competitive, overzealous kid. If it wasn’t for basketball, I would not have ever understood my classmates and seen that they were as capable as me, just set to different wavelengths than the one I streamed on. This was my experience, and I was lucky to have it. But, not everyone gets to have this opportunity to learn. I write now on behalf of myself, and my wish that everyone understood more about what it means to be special needs and what potential hardships those within the program face. I hope from this series of blog posts you’ve heard what we’ve had to say and gained some perspective onto the special education system within our country and what needs to happen for it to serve everyone. Thank you for joining in this process, and I wish you all the best.

Yours truly,

Rose O’Shea Wade.

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References

Blad, E. (2020, January 11). Why the Feds Still Fall Short on Special Education Funding. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-the-feds-still-fall-short-on-special-education-funding/2020/01.

Butrymowicz, Sarah et al. Pipeline to Prison: Special education too often leads to jail for thousands of American children. (2014, October 26). The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/pipeline-prison-special-education-often-leads-jail-thousands-american-children/.

Cramer, Elizabeth et al. Case Studies of Minority Student Placement in Special Education. Teachers College Press. 2007.

Gordon, N. (2017, September 20). Race, poverty, and interpreting overrepresentation in special education. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/race-poverty-and-interpreting-overrepresentation-in-special-education/.

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Jones, C. (n.d.). Why special education funding will be more equitable under new state law. EdSource. Retrieved December 11, 2020, fromhttps://edsource.org/2020/why-special-education-funding-will-be-more-equitable-under-new-state-law/637864.