Distinguishing Difference from Disability: Common Causes of Disproportionality

Metropolitan Center for Urban Educationhttp://education.nyu.edu/metrocenter/

Objectives

• Discuss federal definition of disproportionality• Overview of common root causes of disproportionality• Look at traps of addressing disproportionality

Finding Out Who is in the Room…

• Teachers – Special and General Education• Building or District Administrators• School Psychologists• Researchers• State Education Department administrators

PART I

WHAT IS DISPROPORTIONALITY?

Disproportionality is…

The over-representation of a specific group in special education programs relative to the presence of this group in the overall student population, and/or the under-representation of a specific group in accessing intervention services, resources, programs, rigorous curriculum and instruction relative to the presence of this group in the overall student population.

SOURCE:U.S. Department of Education

THREE INDICATORS OF DISPROPORTIONALITY

SPP Indicator 4Rates of suspension and expulsion:

• Percent of districts identified by the State as having a significant discrepancy in the rate of suspensions and expulsions of children with disabilities for greater than 10 days in a school year; and

• Percent of districts identified by the State as having a significant discrepancy in the rates of suspensions and expulsions of greater than 10 days in a school year of children with disabilities by race and ethnicity and policies, procedures or practices that contribute to the significant discrepancy and do not comply with requirements relating to the development and implementation of IEPs, the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and procedural safeguards.

SPP Indicator 9 and 10

• Percent of districts identified with disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic groups in special education and related services that is the result of inappropriate identification.

• Percent of districts with disproportionate representation of racial and ethnic groups in specific disability categories that is the result of inappropriate identification.

Disproportionality occurs when students are…• Overrepresented in special education services due

to inappropriate referrals to special education

• Underrepresented in intervention services, resources, access to programs, and rigorous curriculum and instruction – either through placements in more restrictive special education placements or discipline policies that remove students from school

PART II COMMON CAUSES OF DISPROPORTIONALITY

Technical assistance recipients

• Thirteen school districts– 6 pilot districts (2004-2009)

• One rural, four suburban, and one urban school district– 7 SPP districts (2007-2009)

• One rural and six suburban– District teams comprised of 25 members

• Seventeen school districts (2009-2014)– District teams comprised of 25 members– 17 districts (2010-2012)

• 3 urban school districts and 14 suburban school district– 17 districts (2009-2011)

• All suburban school districts

POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND BELIEFS

Policies, Practices, and Beliefs

• What are the policies, practices, and beliefs that guide the referral and recommendation of students to receive special education services in you district?

Policies, Practices, and Beliefs

Disproportionality

Policies Practices Beliefs

WHAT’S THE NATURE OF DISPROPORTIONALITY RATES: SAMPLE DISTRICTS

BLACK STUDENTS

Classification Rate of Black Students (ED, LD, SLI)

2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-085.0%

10.0%15.0%20.0%25.0%30.0%35.0%40.0%45.0%50.0%55.0%60.0%

District 1District 2District 3District 4District 5District 6

LATINO STUDENTS

Classification Rate of Latino Students (ED, LD, SI)

2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-080.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

District 1District 2District 3District 4District 5District 6

WHAT COMMON CAUSES EMERGED?

What causes disproportionality?

Disproportionality

Instruction, Curriculum

and Assessment

Interventions and Referral

Process

Discipline Policies and

PracticesTracking

Teacher Expectations

and Misconceptio

ns

Cultural Dissonance

Gaps in curriculum and instruction implementationInstruction, Curriculum and Assessment

• Minimal core curriculum – Limited core or sequenced reading and math programs;

or reliance on a curricular content framework (this works well with strong teachers and professional development).

• Inconsistent knowledge of assessments – Poor interpretation of diagnostic data and translation into

intervention/strategies.

Poorly structured intervention programs for struggling learners (cont.)• Range of interventions with limited fidelity

– Overabundance of interventions for struggling learners (e.g., reading recovery, read 180, fundations, etc.).

– Limited structured as to when and how to best apply.– Duplicitous elementary school level interventions that lack

clear focus of specific intended learning outcomes. – Limited middle school reading interventions; primary focus

on behavioral interventions.– Little to no interventions at high school level.– Intervention decision-making process based on “gut” or

“experience” without considering diagnostic data.

Inconsistent referral process• Special education is viewed as “fixing” struggling students

– Referrals primarily maintain limited information on prior interventions.

• Inconsistent practices of instructional support teams/teacher assistance teams– Inconsistent forms throughout district.– Forms inappropriately filled.

Inconsistent referral process (cont.)

• Child Study Teams/Committee on Special Education teams rely on cognitive/behavioral evaluations and classroom observations– Child study team members are able to move beyond

IQ/achievement discrepancy but lack capacity to examine child cultural attributes as strengths.

• System has minimal capacity for serving ELL students– Child Study Teams/Committee on Special Education teams

unsure of how to distinguish disability from language development issues.

– District teams tend to opt for providing ESL services.– ELL students did not participate in intervention services due to

lack of intervention staff’s capacity to work with ELL students.

These are common policy and practice gaps faced by most districts. Why is it, however, that disproporptionately impacts some groups differently than others?

Cultural dissonance within school environment• Poor and racial/ethnic minority students are viewed as not “ready” for

school– Cultural capacity of instructional support teams is limited

• Teacher beliefs and behaviors regarding schooling are at times incompatible with racial/ethnic minority students beliefs and behaviors regarding schooling– “Urban behavior”– “Anti-intellectual behavior”– “Lack of education as a priority”– “Ghosts in the classroom” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2004)

• Situating of “poverty-induced traits” as expressions of learning or emotional disability– Instructional support teams struggled with distinguishing a

difference from a disability• Marginalization of the developmental expressions and competencies

of low-income and minority students– E.g., African American Vernacular English (AAVE)

PART III

CASE STUDY: HOW DO CAUSES EMERGE?

CARROLL AND HANNOVERTwo cases of school districts experiencing disproportionality

• Both Carroll and Hannover are located in suburban communities outside of large cities in New York State, making them typical of the school districts that were cited by NYSED for disproportionality.

• Each district was cited under New York State’s Chapter 405 law, which used chi-squared analyses to determine whether the predicted levels of Black or Latino students in special were statistically significant from the actual levels of Black or Latino students.

Carroll• 2,500 students.

– 75% White; 20% Black; 3% Asian and Pacific Islander; 2% Latino• Overall classification rate of 13.56%

– 16% of the Black student population and over 23% of the Latino students were classified as disabled.

– This meant that Black students were one and a quarter (1.24) times as likely to be classified disabled compared to all other students and Latino students were nearly one and three quarter (1.70) times as likely to be classified disabled compared to all other all other students.

• Over 9% of their overall district population was classified as ED, LD, or SI.– 12% of the Black student population and over 21% of the Latino

students were classified as ED, LD, or SI– This meant that Black students were over one and a quarter (1.31)

times as likely to be classified disabled compared to all other students and Latino students were nearly two and a quarter (2.23) times as likely to be classified as ED, LD, or SI compared to all other all other students.

Hannover• 8,500 students

– 50% White; 35% Latino; 12%; Black; 3% Asian and Pacific Islander• Overall classification rate of 15.74%

– 18% of the Black student population and nearly 17% of the Latino students were classified as disabled

– This meant that Black students were more than one and a quarter (1.29) times as likely to be classified disabled compared to all other students and Latino students were only slightly more to be likely (1.11) to be classified as disabled compared to all other students.

• Over 12% of their overall district population was classified as ED, LD, or SI– 16% of the Black student population and over 14% of the Latino students

were classified as ED, LD, or SI. – This meant that Black students were over one and a quarter (1.34) times

as likely to be classified disabled compared to all other students and Latino students were nearly one and a quarter (1.21) times as likely to classified as ED, LD, or SI compared to all other all other students

Collecting Data

• In providing technical assistance to Carroll and Hannover data was collected to ascertain the root causes of disproportionality in each district

Data Sources• Post-session evaluations. Data were collected after each technical

assistance and professional development session from session participants via post-session evaluations. The evaluations contained open and closed-ended questions regarding session satisfaction, allowing the participants to respond directly to information presented or discussed in each session as well as provide anonymous feedback.

• Focus groups and interviews. Yearly focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with key district personnel regarding session satisfaction, and what challenges they faced in identifying and addressing the root causes of disproportionality, and feedback for enhancing sessions.

• Surveys. The end of year surveys captured a retrospective on policy, practice and belief changes. The surveys contained open and closed-ended questions and were administered to every participant; this comprised nearly 300 individuals.

• Document evidence of district policies and practices. The documents included new board policies regarding RtI, adopted referral forms, approved interventions, etc.

• Process activity notes. The project conducted at least one process activity during each training session and collected information regarding district process and the beliefs surrounding these the topics discussed during that session.

Key Findings

• District personnel espoused deficit thinking in ability construction: The belief that poverty influences cognitive ability.

• Districts provided poor institutional safeguards for struggling students

• In addressing disproportionality, districts were implemented institutional fixes but did not demonstrate changes in beliefs

CULTURAL DEFICIT THINKING IN ABILITY CONSTRUCTION

The belief that poverty influences cognitive ability.

Cultural Deficit Thinking

• When asked about why Black and Latino students perform academically at lower levels teachers often espouse cultural deficit thinking (see Fine, 1991; Lipman, 1998) – citing deficiencies in those students’ home-lives, socioeconomic status, or culture that they believe impede those students’ ability to learn.

• Similarly, when looking at how students enter the special education system, teachers explain disproportionality through cultural deficit thinking.

• This cultural deficit thinking is evident in how districts talk about the root causes of disproportionality.

Cultural deficit thinking in ability construction

• In Carroll and Hannover, practitioners overwhelmingly identified poverty or conditions related to poverty as underlying causes of the patterns of disproportionality. Their explanations included the following:

• “Low-income status”• “Lack of books at home”• “Lack of belief in education among

the students and parents” • “Connections in achievement gap

between lower socio-economic and higher groups”

• “Correlation of Head Start students and special ed. classified. Correlation of poverty to classification”

• “The federal statistics of programs given through the administration for the disenfranchised poor. When the Bush administration funds programs for poor and children some issues will disappear”

• “They bring ghetto to the school”• “They don’t speak English”

• It is also important to note that although the educators in the two districts where this work was carried out were typically unable to explain how poverty might cause a learning disability, they nonetheless readily cited it as a cause.

• This indicates that the cultural deficit thinking may be grounded in broader and previously unchallenged or unexplored cultural conceptions.

Othering

• In Carroll, this “othering” was continuous and at times driven by the overriding and growing presence of Black students. In a focus group with teachers, several teachers commented about the fear that developed as a result of the mere presence of Black students:

Teacher: And I think the fear is still there. I mean, you have to figure the kids are just as big a fear. I mean, that’s—

Researcher: So teachers are fearful?

Teacher: Exactly, the teachers.Researcher: Okay.Teacher: There’s a fear. There’s a

fear of an overload of black people at one time, too. You know, if there’s too many in one setting, the fear sets in. I mean, it’s like—and then I’m the only black teacher. So it’s oh, my God, what do we do?

Blaming the Parents

• In Hannover and Carroll, there was a continual blaming of parents of struggling students as key culprits in the minimal academic ability of their children.

• In a focus group with teachers, one teacher talked about “getting caught up” in the blaming of parents:

“They probably don’t—the one thing I will say that we talk at the elementary building …And I’m even, you know, I get caught up in it. And it is what do with them at home? You know, that’s the problem that we have…if education is a priority at home, I mean, that’s your most important resource. And if they’re not buying into it, if they’re not telling them at home, you need to do this, you need to do that, how are you going to make that - -? That’s one thing we do hear from our teachers in the elementary level. So they’re not taking ownership of their child’s education.”

POOR ACADEMIC SAFEGUARDS

Poor Academic Safeguards

• “our training is focused on moving level 2 students into level 3 (proficiency), we haven’t been trained to move level 1 students to level 2.”

• Though intentionally focused on supporting the academic growth of students below proficiency at level 2, the school system had been operating in such a way that it did not know how to structure itself to serve the neediest learners. These “level 1 students” become expendable or beyond the pale of help and, in the case students in Carroll, ended up classified as disabled.

Ineffective Instructional Supports• In Hannover while reviewing the

academic records of a random sample of 86 students with disabilities, not one record contained IST referral forms with complete information.

• The inconsistent framework surrounding what are interventions, the referral forms, and the differential patterns of students being referred to IST demonstrated how this one element of the special education referral process without the proper safeguards operated as a tipping point in causing disproportionality in these districts.

• Examples of interventions noted by teachers and IST members: – “moved child seat to front so they

can behave better”– “told parent to read more books

at home”– “paired child with a stronger

reader.” • Although such strategies may

provide some benefit in conjunction with more prescriptive interventions, these strategies tended to be listed singularly, thus implying that’s all the teachers tried with the student.

ADDRESSING DISPROPORTIONALITY: INSTITUTIONAL FIXES BUT NOT BELIEFS

• In 2006-07 both districts’ superintendents presented to their school board members a plan for improving the academic outcomes of all students. These plans contained some of the following new policies and practices:– Use of research-based instructional practices in Tier 1 Response to Intervention;

utilization of social and emotional development framework (SEDL); – Implementation of positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) at middle and

high schools, – Re-examination of the process of student assignment to honors and AP courses,– Improvement of the professional development regarding English language learners

in monolingual classrooms, – Development of a bank of research-based interventions for Tier 2 RtI, improvement

of effectiveness of co-teaching model, – Reduction of the number of self-contained classrooms,– Improvement of communication between home and school environments, – Development of a multicultural team to examine the culturally responsive nature of

curriculum, development of community collaborative to bring in parents, – Development of transition programs at the middle and high school, – Support for and encouragement of culturally responsive instructional professional

development, and – Development of alternatives to suspensions.

• The most substantive area of institutional change involved the re-development of the ISTs forms, membership and systematic collection and usage of data. A district director commented on the various changes involved in ISTs.

“[E]verything’s electronic. We have referral forms and tracking forms. Everything related to the IST process and so we know when a student’s first having trouble, what happens, you know they do have that strong team that reviews them in advance. And we’re much keener about making sure everyone gets intervention no matter what color. No matter what language they speak.”

Part IV:The Caveats of Addressing Disproportionality: What do Districts Struggle with?

Caveat #1: Rate Changes Take Time and Must be Carefully Interpreted

2005-06 2007-086%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

Classification Rate

Black

Latino

White

School Year

Cla

ssifi

catio

n R

ate

2005-06 2007-080.50.70.91.11.31.51.71.92.1

Relative Risk

Black

Latino

White

School Year

Rel

ativ

e R

isk

Caveat #2: Districts Can Game the Process

2003-04 2007-0810%

11%

12%

13%

14%

15%

16%

17%

18%

Classification Rate

Black

Latino

White

School Year

Cla

ssifi

catio

n R

ate

2003-04 2007-080.5

0.7

0.9

1.1

1.3

1.5

1.7

Relative Risk

Black

Latino

White

School Year

Rel

ativ

e R

isk

Caveat #3: Being Guardians of Equity Requires Naming Inequitable Treatment

• Example #1: Compare and Contrast Venn Diagram• Example #2: Slavery incident

Example #1: Classroom Observation of a compare and contrast lesson (9/24/08)

• Belongs here• Born here• Speaks English• Gets help from

government• Birth certificate• Nice neighbors

• Doesn’t belong here• Born in DR – another country• Speaks Spanish• Can’t get help from the

government• No papers• Sometime not nice neighbors• Your family helps you alot

US Citizen Illegal Immigrants

Part V

DISCUSSION

Thank you!

Roey AhramRoey.ahram@nyu.edu

Dr. Eddie Fergusedward.fergus@nyu.edu