New Studies Challenge the Claim That Black Students Are Sent to Special Ed Too Much
August 19, 2019
By: Jill Barshay
Source: The Hechinger Report
Two quantitative studies find that black students are under-identified for disabilities at school.
Decades of research have documented that students of color, particularly black children, are disproportionately classified by schools as having disabilities. In 2016, 12 percent of black children across the nation received services at school for disabilities ranging from emotional disturbances to physical disabilities to intellectual impairment. Only 8.5 percent of white children received those services.
The disability rate for Hispanic students — 9.4 percent nationally — is only slightly higher than for whites and the disparity hasn’t been as contentious as the disproportionality for blacks. Some academics and advocates have argued that disability status had become a tool to perpetuate racial segregation, especially in the South.