THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 31, 1995 TAG: 9503310522
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
Federal civil rights investigators are reviewing several local school districts as part of a nationwide probe into whether schools are unfairly putting minorities into special-education classes.
Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Accomack County and Newport News are among 15 under review in Virginia, officials said Thursday.
Investigators from the U.S. Department of Education's Office For Civil Rights spent last week in Norfolk poring over the district's special-ed records. The officials visited Portsmouth about two weeks ago. It was the second visit for both cities.
A spokesman for the federal agency said it is too soon to say whether any problems existed in the districts or whether any violations of students' civil rights had occurred.
``We would never make that determination until we have all the evidence in,'' spokesman John Bilinski, who is based in Philadelphia, said Thursday. ``We're still in the data collection stage.''
Rodger Murphey, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said an initial survey of the districts chosen showed that blacks and other minorities were ``over-represented'' in special education classes.
The students of most concern are considered educable - those who are mildly or moderately retarded with IQs between 50 and 70, officials said. An IQ of about 100 is considered normal.
Bilinski said federal education officials consider the issue to be of national importance and have focused ``full attention'' on how minorities are treated by public schools.
``We're concerned about minority students' access to a high-standard, high-quality curriculum,'' Bilinski said. ``We're looking at a series of school districts as part of our national strategy of reviewing under-served populations of students.''
The other districts in Virginia are Roanoke, Henry County, Prince George County, Danville, Bedford, Henrico County, Fairfax County, Lynchburg and Pittsylvania County.
Local officials defended their methods of screening students for special-ed programs. They were angered by the notion that they might be discriminating against black students.
``Besides (my) being incensed by it, my chief psychologist and department head for psychological services is an African-American and she would go right through the ceiling with these things,'' said Carroll R. Bailey Jr., director of special education and services in Portsmouth.
``I know we are not because we use so many tests, and it's not all based on test information,'' said Shirley Underwood, Norfolk's senior director of special education. ``We also look at how a student does at home, how he does at school, his skill level, his independence. We go through so many hoops.''
The students in question are a tiny percentage of the overall student body in the districts.
This school year in Norfolk, for instance, 4,382 kids out of an enrollment of about 34,600 are special-education kids. But only 419 of them fall within the mildly to moderately retarded category that the civil rights office is studying, officials said. Of the 419 students, 86 percent - or 360 - are black. Norfolk's overall school population is 61 percent black.
Underwood said the kids in question have IQs well below average but in some cases might be able to participate in a regular classroom. For that reason, there is room for professional judgment on where a child should be placed, which also leaves room for concern over potential discrimination, officials said.
Bailey and other special-ed professionals said, however, that the process of identifying kids with special needs has become much more sophisticated, leaving less margin for error.
``The tools and methods that have been developed over the last 20 years are as bias-free as they could be,'' Bailey said.
State officials said they do not have evidence to suggest that black kids are being unfairly labeled.
``We do not have any data to support that black kids are being dumped into special-education programs because schools don't know what to do with them or have anywhere else to put them,'' said Thomas A. Elliott, division chief of the state Department of Education's office of compliance coordination in Richmond.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported this week on a study revealing that children born to poor, black women and to uneducated mothers of all races are more likely than other children to suffer from mild retardation.
The CDC announced plans for an early-intervention project aimed at giving such kids intellectual stimulation before they reach school, which researchers said could increase their IQ by as much as 15 points.
Based on such evidence, Bailey said, ``it's my contention is that OCR has missed the point.'' Poverty among minorities in the urban areas of Hampton Roads might mean that more black kids would need special-education programs, he said.
Local school officials said they were unsure when the federal review would be completed. Norfolk was first notified in March 1994 that it was under review. Since then, federal investigators have made two visits to collect data and talk to teachers and administrators, Underwood said. MEMO: AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN CLASSES FOR THE MENTALLY RETARDED Below are the
number of African-American students in Hampton Roads school districts
who are classified as mildly or moderately retarded, compared with the
overall percentage of African-American students in each district. The
numbers are based on enrollment data for 1992.
For complete chart information see microfilm.
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights. Data for
Portsmouth and Suffolk were not provided. 1992 was the most recent year
available.
KEYWORDS: SPECIAL EDUCATION MINORITY STUDENT by CNB