Interview
A Matter of Justice

A Harvard University researcher says problems of inequity in special education can be resolved--if all hands are on deck.

Over the past few years, educators have been giving increasing attention to the overrepresentation of minority children in special education. Dan Losen, associate researcher at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, contributes to the growing analysis with Racial Inequity in Special Education (Harvard Education Press, 2002). A compilation of essays by more than 20 researchers, the book is co-edited with Gary Orfield, the Project's co-director. Losen, a former elementary school teacher, talks to NEA Today's Marilyn Milloy.

What should educators make of your finding that poverty alone doesn't explain this problem?
They should be aware that unconscious racial discrimination plays a part and that this may be the tip of the iceberg because of all the other inequities we see flowing along the lines of race and class--disproportionate suspensions, tracking, the underrepresentation of certain minorities in gifted and talented classes.

This doesn't mean we're trying to make educators or teachers the bad guys, of course. We're part of a society where all kinds of racial biases and stereotypes affect our decisions every day. But rather than ignore them, we have to acknowledge that they exist, then track the disparities and think of ways to reduce them.

Bias and discrimination--those are loaded terms. Many people just don't see themselves bringing those attitudes into the classroom.
That's why we call it unconscious bias. We have to start with the acknowledgment that these are sociopolitical kinds of decisions that we're making about the kids. And when disparities like these are so large, we have to revisit what we're doing. That data shows that all minority kids are not always overrepresented, for instance. Most often it's Black children, and most often Black males, who carry the most negative stereotypes in this society. Also, we see very little racial disproportionality in the "hard" disability categories--deafness, blindness, autism--where you get a medical diagnosis without all the subjective elements.

Having said that, we don't need to do a lot of blaming. We just have to own it as a problem that we can solve, because the fact of the matter is that it's not all about discrimination, it's not all about poverty, it's not all about any one thing. High-stakes testing has played a part, for example.

What do you mean?
There have been perverse incentives to identify more kids who have special education or discipline issues as a way of weeding out some of the lower achievers in class. It's scary for teachers. If you're responsible for the outcome of your low achievers, and you feel you're not getting support to begin with, you have an overcrowded class, and now you have to do inclusion of two additional kids, you do what you can to ease the burden. There are definitely teachers who feel overwhelmed yet really want to do the best thing by these kids and do see special education as an opportunity for them to get more one-on-one instruction, to get into the smaller classroom. High-stakes tests add to the pressure, because when kids can be retained a grade or fail to get a diploma, it just ratchets everything up.

Children with disabilities won't escape testing pressures under the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
True, and we're actually very supportive of this principle of disaggregating achievement of all kids so that you can't mask things when the Black kids aren't doing well or the kids with disabilities aren't doing well. That said, we have some very serious concerns about schools being held accountable without being given the resources and the wherewithal to help kids meet these high standards.

What resources do you mean?
Funds to provide reading intervention and high-quality services for students, to pay for experienced teachers, and to support training and special development of teachers and mentor relationships. Many teachers may not be prepared well to teach a diverse group of learners. But the resources are not there, particularly in high minority districts. And now with states experiencing these budget crunches, to hold the schools accountable without providing the funds is just adding an injustice to a bad situation. Special education, for instance, has been inadequately funded for 25 years, and that resource shortfall has had a cumulative effect.

So where does the solution begin?
Our government has already said overrepresentation is a problem, and states are supposed to be collecting data, analyzing it, and intervening. During the reauthorization of IDEA, I think we can improve upon what the old law says by demanding that data be collected from every school in the district and reported publicly. That's a starting point, because this is not a problem everywhere. It's not a problem in every classroom, it's not a problem in every school.

Then once a racial disparity has been found that is really statistically unexplainable, we would ask the principal to find out if there's any kind of justification. Where there's no rational explanation, the school should have to put in place a plan--to not necessarily eliminate it, but to bring it under control. It would be an important start.