Understanding Disproportionality in Education

Taken from Education Policy Brief published by the Center for Evaluation and Educational Policy Equity Project — Indiana University

This article is adapted from a recent newsletter article featured in the Education Policy Brief published by the Center for Evaluation and Educational Policy Equity Project from Indiana University. The article addresses Disproportionality through an equity lens and offers suggestions for addressing Disproportionality at the local district level.

Even with the greater emphasis on accountability in our schools today, gaps in achievement, graduation, retention, suspension, expulsion, and special education that affect children of color and children of poverty continue to remain. The disproportionality of culturally diverse students in special education has been a persistent and complex issue. Disproportionality exists when a specific group is over or under represented in a specific category or area.

While disproportionality has been well studied, there are no definitive answers as to why it occurs. However, when teachers feel that they cannot provide the resources students need, or when students appear not to conform to norms of the school system, teachers often turn to special education as a resource which is consistently and readily available.

The disproportionality of students of color in educational programs cannot be fully comprehended as long as it is considered a singular event, divorced from the broader context of American education and American society. The No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) require that we provide all children with the opportunity to succeed. The persistence of disproportionality illustrates the challenge we face in providing an effective and equitable education for all children. One step in providing instruction and curriculum that can reach a diverse student population is to examine our own practices and beliefs through a cultural lens. Cultural competence, or culturally responsive teaching, provides a conceptual framework through which we can develop a better understanding of how to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds.

Cultural competence is a developmental process through which a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies come together to form a system which works effectively across cultures. Being culturally competent requires knowledge, skills, experience, and the ability to engage in practices which result in improved services and outcomes for all students. Many kinds of diversity training stress the appreciation of other cultures, but appreciation alone does not provide the skills and knowledge that teachers and schools need to effectively work with students across all cultures. It requires that we engage in difficult dialogues, asking ourselves what we are doing to create practices that will benefit all our students, especially those who have not benefited before. Some of the ways in which schools work to develop cultural competence are:

• Holding facilitated conversations on race.
• Creating a cultural competence rubric for instruction, policies, and practice.
• Creating study groups using text-based discussions on race, equity, and application to practice.
• Examining local and national data to better understand the impact of race and issues of equity on teaching and learning.
• Developing questions that raise the issue of race and equity in planning, practice, and policy.
  

In Indiana, the Center for Evaluation and Educational Policy Equity Project has worked with local schools to develop teams to address disproportionality in special education through a process they call LEAD. LEAD (Local Equity Action Development) is a local change process grounded in cultural competence that addresses disproportionality in special education and other equity issues facing schools.

The LEAD process offers a collaborative model for local school districts to address disproportionality and other issues of equity in a manner that stresses cultural competence. Local teams move through a process in which they identify an action that they believe will have the greatest potential impact, develop and implement a plan around that action, and use local data to assess the effects of their plan  and continue to adapt and improve it. Early on in the process the need to understand and develop culturally competent practices and policies became evident, as did the complexities of addressing equity.  Schools participating in LEAD have chosen to address disproportionality in special education by piloting strategies developed locally and based on their own data, needs, and culture. Teams, composed of district leaders and project staff, work together to understand disproportionality on both local and national levels. The team collects and analyzes data, researches best practices, and develops and implements an approach specific to the district that will have the greatest impact on disproportionality. The process is based on four assumptions:

• All plans must be local.
• Local data is an essential first step in planning. 
• The effort must be an active collaboration between general education and special education.
• Conversations about race, disproportionality, and equity are essential. While these conversations are awkward and often difficult, they are a critical step in the ongoing process of developing cultural competence.
  

Most of the LEAD projects are in the early stages and have only begun implementation.

The Equity Project from Indiana University is currently working with participating districts to develop an evaluation strategy to monitor short-term impacts in terms of referrals and staff attitudes, and the long-term impact on rates of disproportionality in special education.

Over the first phase of development of the LEAD projects, however, the participants and project staff have learned several important lessons:

• Data are an integral part of the process.
• Conversing about issues of equity, especially race, is a developmental process; ample time to build trust is necessary. 
• Ownership of the process grows through action. 
• Sustainability in addressing equity issues is more likely to occur when LEAD is incorporated into the district's overall plans for school improvement and other initiatives and is understood as an effort that benefits all children.
• Collaboration between special education and general education is essential.
  

The initial work of the LEAD teams locally show that projects addressing disproportionality issues must be incorporated into a district’s overall plan for school improvement. There are simply too many different school reform initiatives for school improvement currently implemented to add yet another. Rather, equity initiatives work best when they are integrated in ongoing initiatives and other programs.

For more information on LEAD, Disproportionality in Special Education, and The Equity Project, contact CEEP at 812-855-4438 or visit their Web site: http://ceep.indiana.edu/equity.