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##  Five Strategies To Reduce Overrepresentation of Culturally and                  Linguistically Diverse Students in Special Education. ERIC/OSEP                 Digest #E596.                                                                

Children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds                 comprise a large percentage of public school students. Diversity is             increasing, and one of the most troublesome issues associated with              its growth is the overrepresentation of minority children in special            education--that is, more minority children are served in special                education than we would expect based on their percentage in the                 general school population. 
In the 1960s, at the height of the                 Civil Rights movement, the issue of disproportionality of minority              students in special education first received national attention.                Since that time, researchers and practitioners have studied the                 issue in an effort to understand and explain how the processes used             to identify, assess, and place students in special education                    programs may contribute to the overrepresentation of minority                   students. In addition, they are identifying processes that                      successfully prevent inappropriate placement and ensure that the                opportunities for educational achievement offered to minority                   students equal those offered to the majority group. 
To this end,              researchers Beth Harry and Janette Klingner, with support from the              U.S. Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), are investigating             exemplary special education referral and decision making processes              for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Although Harry              and Klingner are in the early stages of their work, they are finding            that professionals generally attribute overrepresentation to one of             the following sources: family and community issues, external                    pressures in schools (e.g., mandated curriculum, high stakes                    assessments), classroom instruction and management, and teacher                 perceptions and attitudes. There is widespread recognition that                 supports provided to teachers and other professionals by the school             district are essential to building the capacity of district                     personnel to work with students of different cultures and languages.            This digest provides examples of strategies created by researchers              and practitioners to address some of these issues. PROMOTE FAMILY             INVOLVEMENT AND RESPECT DIVERSE BACKGROUNDSResearchers continue             to point to family involvement in the school and its operation as a             major factor in improving student achievement. However, researchers             also show that for successful collaborations to occur, school                   personnel must respect the cultural background of the                           family. 
Several years ago, the Highland Park School District in               Michigan received support from OSEP to develop a demonstration model            to prevent emotional disturbance and treat children with emotional              disturbance in a culturally competent manner. Family involvement is             a key component of the Highland Park approach. Throughout all                   aspects of the program, families are essential team members. They               are key in identifying supports and designing implementation plans              for the services they and their children receive. The success of the            approach is based on an underlying belief that families are not the             source of their children's difficulty, but rather are partners in               planning for their children's needs. 
Program staff have learned               much about being culturally sensitive when interacting with                     families. LeVann Townsel, director of the program, offers the                   following recommendations: 
*  Take time to educate the family.                Many families do not know what emotional disturbance means. They may            not feel comfortable asking questions or they may view the process              negatively. It is important to view this situation from the family's            perspective. 
*  Go to the family. Whenever possible, meet with the            family in the home. 
*  Arrange parent support groups. Help parents            come together to support each other. Encourage them to develop                  advocacy skills. 
*  Find out what the parents need. Often, parents            need support or an extra boost. Find out what might help them feel              more confident. 
*  Push for parent membership on school and                   community teams and boards. Parents should be given opportunities to            contribute their expertise in ways that are not directly related to             their own child. 
*  Encourage parents to talk about their dreams              for the child. Don't tell parents what is wrong with their                      situation. They already know. 
*  Know the difference between the              culture of the family and the economic situation of the family. It              is important to understand how poverty affects families. For                    example, families may have experience working with welfare agencies             who do business differently than schools. It is important to                    understand behaviors from many contexts and to take an integrated               approach to understanding people. 
*  Learn as much about the                  family's culture as possible. Find out the values-how they view                 disabilities and mental health issues. MAKE THE CURRICULUM                    RELEVANTChildren's learning is enhanced when they have                      opportunities to learn new skills in meaningful contexts. They                  respond positively to curricula that draw upon their own experiences            and celebrate their heritages and cultures. When motivation is high,            children tend to be more actively involved in learning. 
With OSEP             support, Susan Fowler, Dean at the University of Illinois, and her              colleague, Beverly Lewman, in the Department of Special Education,              have developed and are assessing the impact of a culturally                     appropriate preschool curriculum. SPARK, which stands for Skills                Promoted through Arts, Reading, and Knowledge, is a preschool                   creative arts curriculum for teachers of young children with                    developmental delays or at risk of developing delays. SPARK is based            on stories and resources from many cultural and ethnic traditions.              It provides opportunities for preschool children to achieve                     developmental and school readiness skills by actively attending to              stories and participating in activities based on music, art, and                drama. Staff members report that the curriculum helps students who              speak English as a second language learn English faster than                    students who were not exposed to the curriculum. Formal evaluations             indicate that the curriculum helps children develop early learning              skills, particularly increased vocabulary, print awareness, ability             to print, and counting. BUILD ON STUDENTS' STRENGTHSBuilding              on students' strengths has long been a principle of special                     education, but is a particular challenge in teaching students whose             home language is not English. With OSEP support, Robert Jimenez has             been studying the literacy strengths and difficulties faced by                  language minority students with learning disabilities in grades 4 to            6. He has been developing instructional interventions based on                  teaching the strategies of high-performers to low- performing                   students, and these interventions have produced excellent                       results. 
Low performing readers often have naive conceptions about            the purpose of reading. For example, students from language-minority            backgrounds often pursue finishing the task as their primary                    objective and believe that reading is synonymous with decoding and              pronunciation of isolated words. Jimenez supports explicit                      instruction of strategic reading processes, including how to access             what students know in their primary language. Strategies that                   successful bilingual readers share with successful monolingual                  readers include making inferences, drawing conclusions, integrating             prior knowledge into ongoing meaning construction, and asking                   questions when comprehension breaks down. 
In addition, Jimenez has            identified some strategies that he suspects may be indicative of a              bilingual schema for reading. Jimenez provides the following                    example. Searching for vocabulary is a reading strategy that draws              on the native-language strength of Spanish-English bilingual                    students. When students are confronted with unfamiliar vocabulary,              they check to see whether they know a related word in their own                 language. Related bilingual reading strategies include translating,             transferring information across languages, and reflecting on text               either in Spanish or English. These are strategies that help low                performing bilingual students improve comprehension, but they also              appear to be indicators of a fairly well developed Spanish- English             bilingual scheme for reading. TAKE THE TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAM            TO THE COMMUNITYThere is no better way to develop understanding             of a culture than to live within it. With OSEP support, the                     University of Northern Arizona (NAU) is partnering with the Kayenta             Unified School District to prepare teachers. Referred to as                     RAISE (Reaching American Indian Special/Elementary Educators), the              project prepares both Navajo and non-Navajo university students to              earn dual certification in special and elementary education. 
Most             of the Navajo students are currently working as paraprofessionals or            general educators with the district. Non-Navajo students live in                Kayenta, which is a very remote community in the Navajo Nation. The             district provides the non-Navajo students housing at no cost, and in            return the university students work in the schools daily from 8:00              a.m. until noon. 
In addition, a NAU faculty member lives in                   Kayenta and teaches on site. According to Greg Prater, Program                  Director, having a faculty member on site, working and interacting              with the students and school district community, provides university            students with an increased opportunity to learn more about the                  culture and the language. PROVIDE DISTRICT SUPPORT TO BUILD THE               CAPACITY OF PERSONNELWith OSEP support, the Tucson Unified                  School District is designing and implementing a plan to reduce                  disproportionality. According to Gail Bornfield, Director of Special            Education for the district, the goal of this plan is to bring                   supports to children and instructional staff prior to referral for              special education evaluation. The process allows instructional staff            to look at children with high expectations and the belief that all              children can and do achieve. 
The first and crucial step was to                provide significant training in cultural awareness to instructional             staff. As they put their training into operation, the district                  provides several levels of support: 
*  Behavioral specialists                 observe children in the classroom, prepare functional behavioral                assessments, and work with the teacher to develop behavior                      management plans. 
*  Social workers work with families around                 problems that the child is experiencing at school, and in some                  cases, develop behavioral plans for the home. 
*  Instructional                specialists are assigned to the classroom and to individual children            as needed. They are responsible for carrying out the behavioral plan            and monitoring interventions. 
*  A member from the child's                    cultural background on the IEP team provides essential information,             especially when the team is determining eligibility for services for            emotional disturbance. 
*  Teacher tips are written by staff and               are available on the web or in print form. The tips offer practical             ways to integrate positive strategies to address culture in the                 classroom and through instruction. 
*  Study area departments are              established for each of the following cultural and linguistic                   groups: African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian                  American. The department provides specialists and tutors. 
These               support systems provide additional perspectives and approaches to               aid teachers and other district staff in developing their ability to            work with students of different cultures. Such knowledge is                     essential if we are to reduce disproportionate representation and               offer equal educational opportunity to all American                             students. RESOURCESBurnette, J. (November 1999). Critical                 behaviors and strategies for teaching culturally diverse students.              Reston, VA: ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education.            http://ericec.org (ERIC Document Reproduction Service Number ED 435             147). Available for a fee through the ERIC Document Reproduction                Service (EDRS) 800.443.3742. 
Burnette, J. (March 1998). Reducing              the disproportionate representation of minority students in special             education. Reston, VA: ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted            Education. http://ericec.org (ERIC Document Reproduction Service                Number ED 417 501). Available for a fee through the ERIC Document               Reproduction Service (EDRS) 800.443.3742. 
Jimenez, R. (1997). The             strategic reading abilities and potential of five low-literacy                  Latina/o readers in middle school. Reading Research Quarterly, 32,              224-243. 
Markowitz, J., Garcia, S.B., and Eichelberger,                       J.H. (1997, March). Addressing the disproportionate representation              of students from ethnic and racial minority groups in special                   education: A resource document. Alexandria, VA: National Association            of State Directors of Special Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction            Service Number ED 406 810.) Available for a fee through the ERIC                Document Reproduction Service (EDRS) 800.443.3742. 
Santos, R.,                Fowler, S., Corso, R., & Bruns, D. (2000). Acceptance,                          acknowledgment, and adaptability: Selecting culturally and                      linguistically appropriate early childhood materials. TEACHING                  Exceptional Children, 32 (3), 14-22. Available for a fee through the            ERIC Document Reproduction Service (EDRS)                                       800.443.3742. 
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ERIC/OSEP Digests are in the public domain              and may be freely reproduced and disseminated, but please                       acknowledge your source. This digest was prepared with funding from             the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of             Education, under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0026. The opinions expressed             in this publication do not necessarily reflect the positions or                 policies of OSEP or the Department of Education.                             **Title:** Five Strategies To Reduce Overrepresentation of Culturally and                  Linguistically Diverse Students in Special Education. ERIC/OSEP                 Digest #E596.                                                                **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Disabilities and Gifted Education, Council for            Exceptional Children, 1110 North Glebe Road, Suite 300, Arlington,              VA 22201-5704. Tel: 800-328-0272 (Toll Free); Web site:                         http://www.ericec.org.                                                       **Descriptors:**  Cultural Awareness,  Cultural Differences, Cultural Influences,                 Curriculum,  Disabilities, Disability Identification, Elementary               Secondary Education, Family Relationship, Language Minorities,                   Minority Group Children,  Special Education, Teacher Education              **Identifiers:**  Disproportionate Representation (Spec Educ), ERIC Digests                   
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