Complete the ‘Children’s Book Bias Assessment’ form based on two books (including picture books) intended for infant, toddlers, and preschool ?age children. Using the online resources below, by selecting one classic and one contemporary children’s bo

Urban Education Volume 44 Number 4

July 2009 389-409 © 2009 The Author(s)

10.1177/0042085909338686 http://uex.sagepub.com

389

The Intersection of Race, Culture, Language, and Disability Implications for Urban Education

Wanda J. Blanchett University of Colorado Denver Janette K. Klingner University of Colorado at Boulder Beth Harry University of Miami

To date, few researchers have sought to examine the effect of issues of race, culture, language, and disability, let alone to look specifically at the intersec- tion of these issues, as it relates to special education identification, special education service delivery, and students of color’s access to an equitable education. Thus, this article will attempt to help urban education researchers and educators understand (a) why the intersection of race, culture, language, and disability is an urban education issue; (b) how issues of race, culture, language, and disability affect students’ and their families’ quest for an equi- table education; (c) how to advocate for and provide culturally responsive services to racially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse stu- dents and their families; and (d) the implications of the intersection of race, culture, and disability for urban education practice, research, and policy.

Keywords: race; culture;language; special education; disability; urban education

An overwhelming majority of children of color throughout the United States attend schools that are largely made up of students of color, and the quality of their schooling experience seems to be affected by the inter- section of issues of race, culture, language, and disability. According to Orfield, Frankenberg, and Lee (2003), almost three fourths of African American and more than three fourths of Latino children attend majority student of color schools. This reality suggests that despite decades of desegregation mandates and careful attention to attempting to integrate

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American schools, segregated schooling is not a thing of the past as some would like for us to believe, but rather, it is still quite prevalent in the American public school system and in fact has been steadily increasing for the past decade.

The resegregation of students of color is a significant societal issue that warrants immediate attention and action because schools attended by stu- dents of color tend to be schools in which the vast majority of the student population qualify for free or reduced lunch. As Kozol (1991, 2005) so vividly documented, the resources and overall quality of education afforded students who attend high-poverty schools are vastly different from what is available in schools that serve students who are White and middle class and often result in students of color facing a life of challenges and continued poverty. Not only do students of color attend high-poverty schools, they are also more likely than their White peers to actually live in poverty them- selves. According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2005), 70% of African American students, 71% of Hispanic students, and only 23% of White students live in poverty, and these numbers are even more disparaging when it comes to students concentrated in urban environments.

Race and ethnicity also seem to play a significant role in determining the extent to which students are likely to attend high-poverty concentrated schools with students of color being more likely than their White peers to attend schools at which more than 75% of the students live in poverty (NCES, 2005). For example, 47% of African American students and 51% of Hispanic students attend high-poverty schools compared with only 5% of White students (NCES, 2005). On the surface one might ask, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently concluded, what is the problem or why is it that we as a society should be concerned about the fact that students of color, a dis- proportionate percentage of whom also live in poverty, are concentrated in schools together? The answer to this question is simple but very alarming. A considerable body of research (e.g., Ayers & Ford, 1996; Blanchett, 2006; Kozol, 1991; Losen & Orfield, 2002) clearly shows that schools that serve a majority student of color population are quantitatively and qualitatively dif- ferent in terms of their resources and the quality of schooling afforded their children from those attended by predominately White middle-class students. In addition to robbing students of color of an equitable education, having students of color concentrated in schools with other students of color (many who also live in poverty) also robs them as well as their White peers of an opportunity to attend and benefit from racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse schools. As the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in its decision in the University of Michigan’s cases (American Council on Education), “The

Blanchett et al. / Race, Culture, and Disability 391

benefits of diversity are substantial,” the Court said, citing evidence that diversity helps to break down stereotypes, improves classroom discussion, prepares students for the workforce and citizenship, and permits universities to “cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry” (p. 1). Thus, segregated schools both create and perpetuate educational ineq- uities for African American and other students of color while at the same time perpetuating White privilege and dominance.

To date, few researchers (e.g., Ferri & Connor, 2005; Harry, 1992; Klingner, Blanchett, & Harry, 2007; Sleeter, 1987) have sought to examine the effect of issues of race, culture, language, and disability, let alone to look specifically at the intersection of these issues, as it relates to special educa- tion identification, special education service delivery, and students of color’s access to an equitable education. Thus, this article will attempt to help urban education researchers and educators understand (a) why the intersection of race, culture, language, and disability is an urban education issue; (b) how issues of race, culture, language, and disability affect students’ and their families’ quest for an equitable education; (c) how to advocate for and provide culturally responsive services to racially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students and their families; and (d) the implications of the intersection of race, culture, and disability for urban education practice, research, and policy.

As Klingner, Blanchett, and Harry (2007) noted, failure to place issues of race, class, culture, and language at the center of educational considera- tions and decision making assumes that the American education system, special education, and human and community services systems that provide service to families are race, class, culture, and language neutral. In this article, we would like to extend our previous work to more carefully look at the experiences of individuals with disabilities of color and their families as they have tried to navigate an American education, special education, and human and community services systems that are not responsive to the intersection of race, culture, language, and disability.

Why Is the Intersection of Race, Culture, Language, and Disability an Urban Education Issue?

African Americans and other students of color who are identified and labeled as having disabilities often experience what Blanchett, Mumford, and Beachum (2005) and Fierros and Conroy (2002) call “double jeopardy.” Blanchett et al. (2005) used the term to refer to the fact that not only do

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many African Americans and other students of color experience all the edu- cational inequities associated with living in poverty and attending urban schools that are often insufficiently funded and resourced, but, in addition, these students are labeled as having a disability and many of them also expe- rience inequities that are inherent in the special education system, including segregated classrooms, limited access to the general education curriculum, and poor post-school outcomes (Blanchett et al., 2005). In addition, when it comes to development disabilities, African American and other students of color have to contend with yet another set of issues and challenges in their quest for an equitable education. These issues and challenges include, but are not limited to, institutionalized racism, White privilege, and an increased risk for being identified as having developmental disabilities not because being African American or of color results in a disability but instead due to being more likely to live in poverty, receive inadequate prenatal care, and have limited access to early intervention services (Ford, Blanchett, & Brown, 2006; Harry & Klingner, 2006). When there is indeed the presence of a developmental disability and families of color seek services, they are likely to encounter systems and structures that are not prepared to help them navigate services while living life at the intersection of race, culture, lan- guage, and disability, which results in them ultimately receiving culturally unresponsive and inappropriate services and interventions.

Even though the civil rights movement provided the foundation for spe- cial education, special education like the larger educational system has been associated with the inequitable treatment of African American stu- dents and other students of color since shortly after its inception. African American students and other students of color have a long history of being disproportionately represented in special education, which has been a debate in special education for more than 35 years. It is astonishing that only in recent years have claims that disproportionality is indeed connected to issues of race, culture, poverty, and language been taken seriously. This is in part because researchers have been able to document that the experi- ences of students of color in special education are very similar to the expe- riences of students in urban settings, and they have been able to use the urban education research to effectively make this case by applying an equity lens to contextualizing the treatment of students of color with disa- bilities. Similarly, in recent years, researchers have also drawn on critical pedagogy, critical race theory, and disability studies to question the social constructions of disability, disability categories, able-ism, and deficit con- ceptualizations of disability. Despite this significant progress, the intersec- tion of race, culture, language, and disability still remains largely unexplored

Blanchett et al. / Race, Culture, and Disability 393

and largely a missing component in the urban education research literature because urban education rarely addresses disability as a component of the larger urban education agenda, even though, like race, disability has been and is still being used as a method of sorting, stratifying, and excluding.

Public Schooling and Race, Culture, Language, and Disability in the United States:

Sorting, Stratifying, and Excluding

Race has figured prominently in the evolution of public schooling in the United States since its inception. The latter half of the 20th century was marked by a struggle for equity within general and special education (Bullivant, 1993). The arguments concerning the role of schooling as a means of social reproduction (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Oakes, 1985) rather than as a vehicle for social mobility (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Sewell, Haller, & Portes, 1969) are well known and we do not detail them here. Suffice it to say that although schooling has achieved a certain degree of social mobility for some, its structure, content, and methods of inculcating knowledge are readily rec- ognized as being developed to suit the goals of the majority White American society, and until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the social mobility of students of color was not a goal of American education.

Special Education: Equity and Efficiency in Conflict

Progress toward universal schooling for children regardless of handicap- ping condition was fueled by the civil rights movement and deeply influ- enced by its rhetoric of equality and solidarity. Although envisioned as parallel movements, it is not far-fetched to say that the special education and civil rights movements were actually on a collision course (Harry & Klingner, 2006). Special education became a way to provide separate serv- ices for some students, a disproportionate percentage of whom were students of color. The advocates for the right of all children with disabilities to a public education framed special education as one of the answers to the ineq- uities of eras past. For the parent groups and other advocates who lobbied for the passage of a federal mandate for these programs, this was the pur- pose and vision of special education. Indeed, the establishment of the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped in the 1960s and the passage of the Education for all Handicapped Children Act (EHA) in 1975 followed in the wake of the civil rights movement. There is no doubt that, for the

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thousands of children for whom there was no available schooling prior to 1975, the EHA represented the achievement of the society’s goal of equity.

The issue of placement of non-White children in classes for students perceived as “slow” or mildly retarded came to public attention after the Brown desegregation decision. The reluctance of many states to comply with the Brown ruling led to the first official allegations of the use of special classes to continue covert forms of racial segregation. Prasse and Reschly (1986) noted that such allegations were reported in San Francisco as early as 1965 and that the first legal suit on the subject was Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District (1971), which charged that the district was “dumping” African American children in classes for the “mildly retarded.” The landmark Larry P. v. Riles case was filed just months after Johnson (1972), charging that biased IQ tests resulted in gross overrepresen- tation of African American students in mental retardation (MR) programs. The argument was based on the fact that, although African American stu- dents made up 28.5% of the total student body in the school district, they made up 66% of all students in classes for MR. The courts supported the plaintiffs’ charge that the IQ tests being used to place children in the MR category were biased against African American children and declared that the disproportionate representation of African American students in pro- grams for students with mild MR was discriminatory. They banned the use of IQ tests with African American students and ordered the elimination of overrepresentation of African American students in MR programs. Around the same time, similar charges were brought by Mercer (1973) concerning the high rates of placement of Hispanic children in MR programs in California. The most influential cases on this topic centered on language of testing, with Diana (1970), in California, arguing that Hispanic children were being inappropriately tested in English even when they only spoke Spanish, and Guadalupe (1972), in Arizona, making similar charges con- cerning both Hispanic and Native American children. In both of these cases, the plaintiffs were supported by the courts. These landmark court cases of the 1970s provided impetus for the mandate for nondiscriminatory assessment procedures in the civil rights legislation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that laid the groundwork for the requirements for nondiscriminatory testing and the due process safeguards against mis- classification in the passage of the EHA (Jacob-Timm & Hartshorne, 1998).

Prior to 1969, the American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) used a cutoff score of 1 standard deviation from the mean (i.e., an IQ of 85). This definition was changed by the AAMD in 1969 to 2 standard deviations

Blanchett et al. / Race, Culture, and Disability 395

from the mean (i.e., an IQ of 70). Mercer (1973) pointed out the irony in this change, noting that it brought about a “swift cure” for many who had previously been determined to be retarded. Since then, many states have used a variable guideline of a score between 70 and 75 on an IQ test. This, however, has only compounded charges of subjectivity and ambiguity, because a leeway of just 5 points actually results in large differences in the percentages of students who qualify (MacMillan & Reschly, 1998). Such debates highlight the arbitrariness of placement decisions and the social construction of disability (i.e., decisions about who has a disability and who doesn’t have a disability).1

With the passage of the EHA in 1975, the special education and deseg- regation movements officially collided (Harry & Klingner, 2006). The concept of deficit had become a well-established part of the educational belief system and would become the driving force behind decisions about how to educate those who appeared different from the mainstream. Students of color who had once been excluded from schools with Whites would now be placed in special education at rates greater than their percentages in the overall school-aged population.

The Overrepresentation of Students of Color in Special Education Programs

When the disproportionate representation of ethnically and linguistically diverse students in high incidence special education programs (mental retar- dation, learning disabilities, and emotional disturbance) was first brought to the nation’s attention by Dunn in 1968 and studied by a National Academy of Sciences panel (Heller, Holtzman, & Messick, 1982), the focus was on the overrepresentation of African American and Hispanic and high-poverty students in MR programs.2 Between 1948 and 1966, there had been a 400% increase in the number of students identified as MR, and in 1975 when the Education for All Handicapped Children was passed, MR had the highest count of any exceptional child diagnosis. Although the MR category has, historically, been the source of most controversy with regard to ethnic dis- proportionality, it is now used much less frequently than in the past. Whereas the numbers in the learning disabilities (LD) category have increased almost sixfold over the past two decades, the rates of placement for all ethnicities in MR have been reduced by almost half. Nonetheless, among those students who are designated MR, African Americans are more than twice as likely as students of other ethnicities to be identified (Donovan & Cross, 2002).

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Thus, although MR rates have declined overall, we still see significant over- representation of students of color in this category.

Disproportionate representation by ethnic group. Although dispropor- tionate representation is most apparent among African American students when nationally aggregated data are the focus, there are marked differences across states and notable instances of overrepresentation among other eth- nic and linguistic groups when data are disaggregated and population sub- groups are examined (Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, & Higareda, 2005; Oswald, Coutinho, Best, & Singh, 1999). Compared with all other groups combined, African American students are 2.99 times more likely to be classified as having MR, 1.17 times more likely to be classified as having autism, and 1.65 times more likely to be identified as having developmental delay. In contrast, Hispanic students are about half as likely to be classified as having MR and/or developmental delay (U.S. Department of Education, 2003).

As the disability rights movement has taken hold, overall more students with disabilities are being included in general education classrooms. But, this is not the case for students of color. Unlike their White peers, students of color are often excluded from inclusive education programs and the general education curriculum (Fierros & Conroy, 2002; LeRoy & Kulik, 2003). Instead, they tend to spend 60% or more of their school day in segregated special education placements (i.e., in separate classrooms or separate schools from those attended by their nondisabled peers; 24th Annual Report to Congress, 2004). They are also more likely to have uncertified or provision- ally licensed teachers and to graduate with a certificate of attendance/comple- tion versus a high school diploma (Chamberlain, 2005). Once students of color exit special education, most common by dropping out or receiving a certificate of attendance, they experience high unemployment rates, a lack of preparation for the workforce, and difficulty gaining access to postsecondary education (Ferri & Connor, 2005; Losen & Orfield, 2002).

Assumptions About the Causes of Disproportionate Representation

Disproportionate representation is a complex phenomenon that cannot be explained by simplistic views that focus narrowly on the role of poverty or students’ presumed lack of intelligence or other deficits and that pay too little attention to the role of context and other factors external to the child (Klingner et al., 2005), including but not limited to institutionalized White

Blanchett et al. / Race, Culture, and Disability 397

privilege and racism (Blanchett, 2006). By context, we mean the various nested systems that influence a child’s experiences as well as how the child is perceived, from the classroom, to the school, to the local commu- nity, to the larger society, much as with Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecologi- cal systems model.

Assumptions about the role of poverty. We question the notion that stu- dents of color are overrepresented in the MR category because they are more likely to have a disability because of an impoverished environment. In other words, although poverty and associated risk factors, such as low birth weight, exposure to alcohol during pregnancy, tobacco and drug use, malnourish- ment, and exposure to lead, are often described as causal factors in the devel- opment of language or cognitive deficits or maladaptive behaviors (Donovan & Cross, 2002), poverty itself does not automatically result in low learning potential, as evidenced by the significant number of children and schools who “beat the odds” (Donovan & Cross, 2002; O’Connor, 2002). O’Connor argued that there is nothing about poverty in and of itself that places poor children at academic risk but, rather, it is how structures of opportunity and constraint come to bear on their likelihood for achieving competitive educa- tional outcomes. O’Connor and DeLuca Fernandez (2006) noted that a focus on poverty as the explanation for the overrepresentation of African Americans in MR programs oversimplifies the concept of development and conse- quently underanalyzes how the normative culture of society and thus schools (i.e., of the White middle and upper classes) situate minority youths as aca- demically and behaviorally deficient in comparison. They assert that it is the culture and organization of schools (and not poverty) that places minority students at heightened risk for special education placement. Skiba, Poloni- Staudinger, Simmons, Feggins, and Chung (2005) made a similar argument based on their research in school districts in Indiana.

Assumptions about intelligence. One of the most lasting legacies of Western racism is a deep-seated belief in the inferior intelligence of indi- viduals of color. Consider, for example, the effect of the best-selling book, The Bell Curve (Herrnstein, 1994), which, despite its numerous flaws (e.g., Fraser, 1995), was taken seriously by a large segment of the mainstream population. Although many scholars have pointed out the arbitrariness of race and the fallacies inherent in attributing presumed variations in intelli- gence to racial differences (e.g., Gould, 1981), beliefs about inferior intel- ligence have been institutionalized in the policies and practices of our public schools (Steele, Perry, & Hilliard, 2004). Much has been written about

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drawbacks when using intelligence tests with nonmajority populations, yet most school districts continue to classify students as MR based on IQ test scores. IQ tests reflect the cultural, social, and linguistic knowledge of the mainstream (e.g., Hilliard, 1994; Samuda, 1998) and thus, in comparison, students of color are more likely to appear deficient when in fact they are not. Because of concerns about the biased nature of IQ tests, numerous scholars have recommended the elimination or reduction of IQ testing. Hilliard (1995) contended that we need “either a paradigm shift or no mental measurement” (p. 6). The National Research Council (Donovan & Cross, 2002) emphasized that cutoff points for “disability” or “giftedness” are “artificial and variable” (p. 26) and called for an end to the requirement for IQ tests as a “primary criterion” (p. 313) for eligibility. They stated,

IQ tests are me

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