Part I: Special Inequality

In Arizona, attending a pre-dominantly white public school is a good way to get placed in a special education program - as long as you're a minority.

The U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights conducted a survey of the nation's special education programs in 2000. The results show Arizona's minority students are disproportionately represented in special education programs.

"Overall, when comparing the combined rates of children with Emotionally Disturbed, Mentally Retarded, and Specific Learning Disability labels, both American Indian and Hispanic males are labeled at a rate 64 percent higher in schools that are 75 percent or more white than in schools that are 25 percent or less white. The same figure for white male students shows an almost 50 percent decline in disability rates. These results come about despite the fact that minority students attending predominantly white schools are less likely on average to grow up in poverty than minority students attending predominantly minority schools."

The above excerpt summarizing the Office of Civil Rights' data comes from the 2004 Goldwater Institute report, "Race to the Bottom: Minority Children and Special Education in Arizona Public Schools."

The study cites several causes for the over-enrollment of students in special education:

• Perverse financial incentives
• Avoidance of standardized testing
• Misuse of special education as a remedial education
• Segragationist impulses

And it goes on to suggest three potential remedies:

• Changing the state's special education funding formula
• Instituting universal screening for the identification process
• Creating a parental choice program for children with disabilities

This study, and others, will be further examined in future posts as part of series that takes a deeper look at the issue of racial disparity in special education.
The problem of minority over-representation in special education is an old one, and remains a key indicator of inequity in the nation's educational system - a sadly ironic fact as special education was born of the civil rights movement.