DSQ > Summer 2008, Volume 28, No.3

A colleague shared with me recently a short paper by James Kauffman (2007), a writer and thinker in the field of special education who disagrees with just about everything I know and believe. But the paper included some statements about something in which I do believe: reality. In it, he writes, "Too much of what is said about education is absurd — it just does not make sense or add up with what we know… That is, too much of what is said about education does not acknowledge important realities" (p. 245) (Still, I must confess that even about this statement I'd have some questions: Whose reality? Who defines it? Who benefits from it? Those are questions for another day, however).

One reality about education, that we've known for a very long time, is that people from racial and ethnic minorities, or those living in poverty, have been overrepresented in special education in the United States since the 1960's (Artiles, Klingner, & Tate, 2006; Blanchett, 2006; Harry & Klingner, 2006; Losen & Orfield, 2002). We've known about this for a long, long time, but in reality, we haven't done anything about it.

One of the realities of the overrepresentation of people of color and poor people in special education is the underfunding of schools attended primarily by those with minority or impoverished status (Blanchett, 2006). Because they're underfunded, students there don't get the same kind of education that more privileged (white, middle or upper class) students receive — and so, they may be more likely to need extra supports and accommodations. The result has been what some have described as the resegregation of schools through special education (Blanchett, 2006; Losen & Orfield, 2002). Others, like Jonathan Kozol (2007), would say that the reality is that its not just special education that has been resegregated, but all of schools generally — another reality with which I'd agree.

How do we fix this? Without belaboring the obvious, a piece of the solution, of course, would be to adequately fund schools attended predominantly by students from racial and ethnic minorities or who live in poverty. But the reality is probably that such a solution would be like putting a bandaid on an injury requiring major surgery: it'd help, but its not much good in the long-term.

In "Creating Difference: Neo-liberalism, Neo-conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform," Michael Apple has a vision of a better set of solutions:

This is not to dismiss either the possibility or necessity of school reform. However, we need to take seriously the probability that only by focusing on the exogenous socioeconomic features, not simply the organizational features, of successful schools can all schools succeed. Eliminating poverty through greater income parity, establishing effective and much more equal health and housing programs, and positively refusing to continue the hidden and not so hidden politics of racial exclusion and degradation that so clearly still characterize daily life… only by tackling these issues together can substantive progress be made (2004, 28).

To Apple's ideas, I'd add ways of eliminating structural and institutional ableism in our culture — but that, too, is a rant for a different day.

I don't expect that these are the kinds of realities that Kauffman was thinking about when he wrote his own paper. But they are the kinds of things I think about as I work inside the safety of a pretty small, mostly white, university — right next to a large city in the US that is described as the most impoverished, the most violent, with the highest percentage of African Americans, and the fifth most polluted in the nation. This city is in a metropolitan region described as the country's most racially segregated. It is a city that, although so incredibly poor, is right next to the fourth richest county in the United States. It is a city in which most students don't graduate from high school and a city in which half of all school-age children live in poverty. The city? Detroit.

Those are realities I think about every day. Realities about which we're mostly not paying attention.

References

  • Apple, M. (2004). Creating difference: Neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism and the politics of educational reform. Educational Policy, 18, 12-44.
  • Artiles, A., Klingner, J., & Tate, W. (2006). Representation of minority students in special education: Complicating traditional explanations. Educational Researcher, 35(6), 3-5.
  • Blanchett, W. (2006). Disproportionate representation of African American students in special education: Acknowledging the role of white privilege and racism. Educational Researcher, 35(6), 24-38.
  • Harry, B. & Klingner, J. (2006). Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race and disability in schools. NY: Teachers College Press.
  • Kauffman, J. (2007). Labels and the nature of special education: We need to face realities. Learning Disabilities, 14, 245-248.
  • Kozol, J. (2007). Letters to a young teacher. NY: Crown.
  • Losen, D. & Orfield, G. (2002). Racial inequity in special education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
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