THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509170288
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Special Education: The Challenge
Today: Many special ed classrooms have a disproportionate number of
black kids
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 343 lines
They promised smaller classes, individual attention and services that could help her son perform better in the classroom. But to Sheila Vick, most of it sounded too good to be true.
When Portsmouth school officials told her the way her son could get those benefits was to be labeled seriously emotionally disturbed and placed in the special education system, Vick was sure the plan was a bad deal.
Joshua could be an active, worrisome 6-year-old, but ``seriously emotionally disturbed''? The claim so infuriated Vick that she stormed out of a meeting with school administrators and refused to go along with any of it.
Convinced that the child needed extra help, administrators forced the issue, bringing it before a hearing officer who later agreed with the district's findings. As part of a settlement, Joshua's label was switched to one with less stigma: ``learning disabled.''
In Vick's eyes, that didn't change things. Joshua, she said, has languished in the system since his first encounter with it three years ago. Now 10, he's about two years behind grade level.
``It's not special education, it's slow-pace education. It hasn't done diddly squat for him and it's done nothing but lead me to believe that special ed is just a setup. . . for failure,'' especially for black children, Vick said.
Hers is but one voice in a chorus of minority parents who view special ed as a track to a second-rate education, not an academic life raft. Nationwide, black students are twice as likely as white students to be in special education programs. Within those programs, they are often on the lower rungs, in classes for the retarded or emotionally disturbed.
Vick's complaint raises a troubling question: Are minority students steered toward a system that harms them more than it helps?
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Increasingly, special education has come under attack by parents and critics who point to its racial imbalance as a sign that something intended to give disabled kids an edge may need its own Dr. Fix-It. They say special education unfairly targets minority children who don't fit convenient molds.
At its worst, they say, it stereotypes those students and relegates them to classes where challenges and expectations are low.
Federal civil-rights investigators are reviewing records from several Virginia districts, including Portsmouth and five others in the region, as part of a national probe to see whether some minority schoolchildren are unnecessarily funneled into the special education system. At the urging of the General Assembly's Black Caucus, the state Education Department will release a report on the issue later this year.
But some things already are clear. Virginia's special ed placement patterns offer a skewed picture of who appears to measure up and who doesn't.
The Virginian-Pilot's analysis of enrollment data found that black students were over-represented in about half of the state's 15 special education categories last school year, compared with their percentage in Virginia's overall student population. Compared with white students, they were three times as likely to be classified as ``educable mentally retarded.''
Predominantly white school districts placed black students in special ed at the highest rates.
Among the 12 districts with the largest proportions of black students in special education - ranging from 22 percent to 35 percent of the total black enrollment - nine had a predominantly white student population last school year, the analysis showed.
Such disparities are nothing new in special education. In fact, disparities have been noted for at least as long as the nation's public schools have offered the programs to children with disabling conditions.
But in the 20 years since Congress passed the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requiring a free and appropriate education for those children, special ed budgets have mushroomed across the country, catching the attention of educational and political leaders. Red tape has spiraled.
What's more, the persistent over-representation of minority children has fueled charges that the system is really a way to write off minority youths considered bothersome, or those whose circumstances distance them from the white-picket-fence world.
``The big picture says African-American, Hispanic and Native American kids are in these classes, and they don't come out,'' said Harold Dent of Hampton University's Center for Minority Special Education. ``They don't advance and return to the regular program and receive the same kinds of educational experiences that other kids have. That, to me, is bad.''
Carroll R. Bailey Jr., Portsmouth's former special education director, rejects the notion that race factors into the placement of city children in special education classes. Poverty, and the harsh conditions that often accompany it, may be a better predictor, he said.
Still, experts say, socioeconomic factors alone don't tell the whole story.
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If there's one problem with analyzing special ed, it's that some of the labels themselves are fuzzy.
On paper, the road to special education is pretty straightforward. A parent, teacher or another concerned adult can refer a student for testing if a disability is thought to be at the root of academic troubles. A school-based team, which includes a psychologist, evaluates the student and also collects information about school and home life to see whether extra services are needed to improve performance.
Most agree on the need for specially designed classes for the profoundly handicapped. Borderline cases can be more controversial. That's because while impairments like blindness and deafness are fairly easy to detect, others can be highly subjective - relying on more-ambiguous criteria.
Take two of the characteristics used to help define serious emotional disturbance: ``Inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.'' And: ``An inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers.''
It's hardly a science.
Critics also say methods used to assess students can be culturally biased, resulting in improper identification. Moreover, there's no hard-and-fast way to measure the quality of instruction a student received in regular settings before being referred for special education.
But despite the pitfalls, the labeling of students is often treated as a true reflection of a child's real and future abilities. The label is applied to the child. And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the child may become the label.
``Labels have served for tremendous administrative convenience and they're difficult for people to give up,'' said Fred Orelove, executive director of the Virginia Institute for Developmental Disabilities in Richmond.
``They weren't designed that way,'' he said, ``but they've really become more of a convenience for administrators than something that benefits kids. There's nothing magical or scientific about them. We're fooling ourselves if we think the label is a reflection of a child without acknowledging that we're putting a lot of our own values on it.''
Orelove says special ed classifications aren't inherently ``evil.'' But they can make a tough situation worse, he said, if educators focus on them instead of attacking the root problems blocking student success in the first place.
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Just as it's hard to put a finger on any one factor that accounts for most of the under-representation of minorities in talented-and-gifted classes, it's hard to pinpoint a single factor behind their over-representation in special ed.
The reasons are tangled, touching on class, culture, race and conflicting opinions of what constitutes ``intelligence.''
In either case, teachers' expectations of students play a critical role. Special education evaluating committees rely, in part, on teachers' judgments.
``Countless studies have shown that many teachers have low expectations of African-American children, so they tend to spot so-called deficiencies more readily among those children, especially black males and poor children in general,'' said Robert L. Green, a Cleveland State University professor and school desegregation expert.
``These kids are often falsely evaluated for some type of disability when, in fact, they're simply disengaged with the educational process because it hasn't been made challenging or relevant for them.''
In some instances, special ed is a mechanism to create separate and unequal classes.
Last year, for example, a U.S. magistrate ordered Rockford, Ill., to develop a school desegregation plan after authorities learned that it was common for the 28,000-student district to pack vocational classes with black and special-education students. White students who scored below the national average on standardized tests were placed in advanced courses. Minorities with near-perfect scores typically were referred to remedial classes.
``Any way you look at it, when it comes to low-income black children, in particular, special education is the segregating tool of the '70s, '80s and '90s,'' Green said. ``The weight of the stigma alone is enough to turn a child off to school.''
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When Theresa Parker worked as a paraprofessional in the Franklin City district, she noticed how some special education classes offered lots of fun and games but little on the academic side of the ledger.
She also noticed the element of color. For about every five black students enrolled in that district last school year, one ended up in special ed. Whites were placed at a rate of one in 14.
Parker almost had a personal run-in with the system when staffers from a day-care center said her granddaughter, LaChanda, was ``developmentally delayed.'' She rejected the idea and they dropped it.
``They said things like, `Well, she doesn't seem to have good motor skills or coordination.' But just because my child or your child doesn't do something when they think it should be done does not mean there's something wrong with the child. People develop differently. And how can they know these children better than I do?
``I think a lot of these teachers and people who work with kids just want to find something wrong with the child, or come up with some kind of excuse not to teach the child, not to do their jobs.'' Now 10, LaChanda is an honor roll student.
Although she had a right to refuse, Parker later allowed LaChanda's 8-year-old sister, LaRhonda, to receive special education services, primarily for speech problems. But that was different, said Parker, who retired from the Franklin district last year. The help is specific, narrow in scope - not some kind of trap, she said.
At Norfolk's Bowling Park Elementary, which serves students from some of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods, Principal Herman D. Clark Jr. tells his staff that special ed should be a last resort, not a first option. Before teachers refer a student for testing, he asks them to write a detailed account of what they did to address any additional needs.
Such extra measures don't always add up to lower numbers, however. About 17 percent of the school's students are in special ed classes - on the high end among Norfolk's elementary schools.
At the same time, Bowling Park is one of the state's academic jewels. Educators there have created an environment where all students are expected to produce.
``I think most people see the referral process as an easy way out,'' Clark said. ``Most of the time, they don't want to put up with the student in the regular class or do anything seen as extra. I wish I had something better, more positive to say. Overall, I think that's what it is.''
But special ed administrators say the math is complicated. And critics, they argue, tend to downplay the dizzying list of needs many students bring to school; needs that often have multiplied by the time they reach the schoolhouse door.
LaVerne T. Alebiosu, a psychologist in the Chesapeake district, regularly sits on evaluating teams, where she hears first-hand what students and teachers are up against. ``I think we do all we can to meet the needs of all children,'' she said.
When racial issues come up, she said, teams are encouraged to discuss them openly and honestly - like the time someone described a white girl as ``mature,'' but a black boy from the same socioeconomic background was called ``street-smart.'' Moreover, Chesapeake uses an array of assessment tools and routinely reviews decisions to make sure they were on target, she said.
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For others, placement patterns still raise red flags. After hearing the results of the newspaper's analysis of enrollment patterns in the Williamsburg-James City district, former Minority-Achievement Coordinator Stan Jones said they seemed to indicate that some children weren't getting a fair shot at an education.
In his district last school year, black students were three times as likely as white students to be identified as seriously emotionally disturbed and eight times as likely as white students to be labeled educable mentally retarded.
``It suggests to me that there's something different about African-American children. That black children are somehow different than white children because they're disproportionately placed in special education,'' said Jones, now an assistant principal. ``The problem is, that difference is often interpreted as something being wrong with the child.''
Placement disparities need to be examined, he said. ``We could be destroying potential.''
In high-poverty districts, over-referrals of minority children may be motivated by a desire to get disadvantaged students any kind of extra help, especially if the district can't afford much on its own, said Brenda Williams, associate professor of educational administration and special education at the College of William and Mary.
``Sometimes,'' she said, ``they see special education as the only option, even if they don't truly believe the child really has a disability. But schools need to change to meet the needs of current students, black and white. Oftentimes, we still operate with grandpa's curriculum and methods. There need to be other, better ways of reaching our children without labeling them.
``Everybody - the community, the churches, the parents and the schools - must play a role. It's not just a `school problem.' ''
William C. Bosher Jr., state superintendent of public instruction, said he wanted to complete his department's review of special ed records before deciding whether some minority children have been unfairly tracked into those classes.
``If we find that there are abuses, we need to address that in a corrective way,'' he said. ``A fear I have, on one hand, is the potential of over-representation, meaning there is some racial discrimination. But that has to be kept in balance with the concern that if young people are truly handicapped, their race should not have any influence on the placements - no matter what the numbers look like in the end.''
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To some parents, one of the programs' most upsetting aspects is what children get once they're in the classes.
Sitrenia Danzey, a member of the state's Special Education Advisory Committee, referred her son for special ed about five years ago, when he was in the fourth grade. He had problems concentrating and adapting to a traditional classroom setting.
The idea of personal attention for him was appealing, she said. The trouble was, he got little of it.
``They talk about individual education,'' she said, ``but a lot of times they lump all types of children in the same class together. . . children with different labels, problems, everything.''
Danzey, a Prince George County resident, wonders whether many students are being derailed early on. In Virginia, 2,823 special ed kids 14 to 18 years old graduated with a diploma or certificate in 1994. On the other hand, more than half as many in the same age group - 1,729 - dropped out, a federal Education Department report showed.
``A lot of it really comes back to making more parents aware of the process,'' Danzey said. ``Parents must be informed. And they must be vocal.''
Confronting the system isn't always easy. Vick, the Portsmouth parent, gets upset when she recalls the tense meeting with school administrators.
``You're there, surrounded by all of these people, these so-called professionals who come across as though they have all the answers,'' she said. ``I mean they really just overwhelm you with their information.
``I just couldn't accept what they were saying, though. I couldn't accept the statement that my son was emotionally disturbed. Yes, I agreed to the testing, but I didn't know it would come down to all of that. They kept saying, `How come you don't trust us? Why don't you trust us?' I was just furious. I said, `Because you could be wrong.' ''
Several districts across the country are trying a number of solutions to reduce racial imbalances in special ed classes. In a pilot project in San Francisco, for example, a team of psychologists, special ed teachers, administrators and parents reviews all referrals in 20 schools to make sure regular classroom options have been exhausted.
The federal Education Department is pushing states to raise expectations for special education students so those classes don't become dumping grounds.
And some experts, like Johns Hopkins University researcher Robert Slavin, say minority over-representation in special ed would be diminished if money for those programs would be spent in regular classrooms; on early intervention, teacher training, tutors and initiatives that offer intensive instruction in basic skills.
Studies suggest those steps can improve education not only for disabled students, but for all students.
``Most special ed programs are now structured with educators focusing on deficits and weaknesses and then separating youngsters,'' Slavin said. ``It's just a system with a very low pay-off for most children.'' MEMO: METHODOLOGY
To review special education enrollment trends over time,
computer-assisted reporting specialist Lise Olsen and education reporter
Vanee Vines used a database manager program to analyze four years of
computerized enrollment data from the state Education Department.
The records included details of gender and ethnicity of special
education students enrolled in public school districts and
state-operated programs.
Most of the figures reported are from the 1994-95 school year.
Olsen also analyzed special education enrollment data reported to the
federal Department of Education by many Virginia districts. The most
current federal records available are from 1992.
U.S. Education Department authorities say minority students are
"over-represented" in special education when the percentage of special
education students who are minorities is larger than the percentage of
minority students in the educational system as a whole. The newspaper
used that standard to analyze Virginia's data.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Steve Earley, Staff
Theresa Parker didn't believe staffers from a day-care center when
they said her granddaughter LaChanda, 10, right, was
``developmentally delayed.'' But she later allowed LaRhonda, 8,
left, to receive special education help for speech problems.
Photo
Theresa Parker, left, goes over homework with her granddaughter,
LaRhonda Parker, 8.
Photo by Steve Earley, Staff
Joshua Vick, 10, was at the center of a dispute between his mother,
Sheila Vick, and Portmouth school officials who wanted to classify
him as "seriously emotionally disturbed" when he was 6.
Graphics by Virginian-Pilot staff
Special Education: The Numbers
The Element of Race
Black Students in Special Education
Geography and Special Education Placement
Just Across the Line
KEYWORDS: SPECIAL EDUCATION MINORITY STUDENTS by CNB