Essay about Minority Students in Special Education Programs

The special education programs in the United States have been designed to help children with special needs learn easier and fit in better with the education program. Unfortunately, many minority students get caught up in the mix and don’t get the proper attention they deserve. Furthermore, minority students are seriously over-represented in the educational programs. Many minority students are misdiagnosed and put into special education programs when in fact; they do not have a learning disability. This has become a growing problem in this country because it is seen as the easy way out. Schools all over the U.S. are doing this in order to not have to properly test and evaluate students for learning problems. There have been†¦show more content†¦The two important court rulings were the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1971 and Mills vs. The Board of Education of the District of Columbia in 1972 (ERIC Clearinghouse, 1998). These court decisions showed that â€Å"the responsibility of States and local school districts to educate individuals with disabilities is derived from the equal protection law of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.†(ERIC Clearinghouse, 1998, n.p.) The special education programs of the United States have definitely come very far in the last 25 years, but little progress has been made about minority or sometimes considered migrant, special education students. A migrant student is one that transfers from school district to school district with his parents who are trying to find seasonal employment (Lozano-Rodriguez Costellano, 1999). It has been shown that even though these migrant students do not get the attention they deserve they are some of the most needy special education children. They suffer from poor nutrition, poverty and many health problems (Lozano-Rodriguez Costellano, 1999). The law requires that all children should be fairly evaluated in their native language and then classified into the correct disability category (Lozano-Rodriguez Costellano, 1999). As Lozano-Rodriguez and Costellano (1999) state inShow MoreRelatedMinority Groups And The Minority Group Within Special Education1698 Words   |  7 PagesDisproportionality refers to the overrepresentation or underrepresentation of a minority group within special education programs and services. The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education has been an ongoing and significant matter in education for decades. More and more minority children are being identified as disabled or having an intellectual disability or learning disability. 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