Ceci

A Historical Analysis of Brown’s Relationship to and Effect on Special Education

Blanchett

"In theory, special education was conceived to provide support and for students who were perceived as a challenge for the general education system, including African American students, students with disabilities, and African American students with disabilities. Students who were eligible received specialized services such as individualized instruction, tutoring, and other forms of intervention to assist them in reaching their potential." (Blanchett, 2009, 375)

“The low success rate of minority students in our schools has too often been portrayed as individual failures of students instead of instructional failures of the system based on false notions of objectivity shrouded in the mantel of impartial tests of “ability.” (p. 307)

A Historical Analysis of Brown’s Relationship to and Effect on Special Education

“When students with disabilities were served, they were often educated in “ghetto-like” isolated and “run-down” classrooms within buildings that housed students without disabilities or in separate facilities altogether.” (Blanchett, 2009, p.373)

“The Brown v. the Board of Education decision transformed American public education, not just for African American students, as some would have us believe (Blanchett, Mumford, & Beachum, 2005).” (Blanchett, 2009, 372)

“Before the Brown litigation and subsequent decision, African American students and students with disabilities had similar experiences in the American educational system. Both were treated as second-class citizens.” (Blanchett, 2009, 372)

“Students with disabilities who are included in general education classrooms have higher levels of social skills, are more accepted by their nondisabled peers, and have greater exposure to the general education curriculum.” (Blanchett, 2009, p.376)

“In theory, special education was conceived to provide support and training for students who were perceived as a challenge for the general education system, including African American students, students with disabilities, and African American students with disabilities. Students who were eligible received specialized services such as individualized instruction, tutoring, and other forms of intervention to assist them in reaching their potential. Once students’ needs were met and/or appropriate strategies or modifications implemented, they would return to general education settings (Blanchett & Shealey, 2005).”(Blanchett 375)

“Because the Supreme Court in its decision, in this case, established that forcing African American students to attend segregated or Black-only public schools denied them equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the 14th amendment, advocates and parents of students with disabilities were able to use this decision to argue against the segregation of students with disabilities on the basis of disability.” (Blanchett, 2009, 373)

“Although few would have predicted that the Brown v. the Board of Education case would have any implications for special education and students with disabilities, in particular, this decision laid the foundation for challenging the constitutionality of excluding children with disabilities from public schooling opportunities (Blanchett et al., 2005).” (Blanchett, 2009, 373)

“When students with disabilities were served, they were often educated in “ghetto like” isolated and “run-down” classrooms within buildings that housed students without disabilities or in separate facilities altogether” (Blanchett, p. 373).

“PARC v. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1972) guaranteed special education services to children and youth with mental retardation (Smith, 2004). However, the decision in this case did not address educational provisions for children with disabilities other than mental retardation” (Blanchett, p.374).

“Racism, discrimination, and White privilege have been combined in current practice to form a deadly cocktail consisting of the Black/White achievement gap, accountability, high-stakes testing, inadequately prepared teachers, culturally unresponsive curriculum, and No Child Left Behind. In their attempt to go for broke, several scholars (Bell, Ladson-Billings, Haberman, Ayers) have been the lone voices crying in the wilderness to put a stop to these practices that, if not by design, have certainly resulted in even greater educational inequities for African American and other poor children in urban schools.”

“In conclusion, going for broke as an American society and educational system to address educational inequities is simply providing an equitable high-quality education to all children regardless of race, social class, disability, or the intersection of all of these circumstances. It means truly leaving absolutely no child behind in theory, policy, and practice.” (Blanchett 386)

“Interventions of this type aim to reduce group differences primarily by elevating the performance of the lowest group—whether the group is identified as poor, minority, low ability, or socially at-risk—toward the level of the higher group” (Ceci & Papierno, p.150).

Introduction

“Each year, America allocates a large sum of it's budget and tax dollars to improve the health, educational, social, and financial outcomes of its children.” (Ceci, & Papierno, 2005, 149)

“Toward this end, American educational, public health, social service, and other governmental agencies invest billions of dollars in various forms of intervention (e.g., the 2004 Federal Budget requested $12.4 billion for Title 1, over $1 billion for reading programs [e.g., Reading First], and the modernization of programs designed to provide $40 billion over 10 years for health care coverage of low-income, uninsured children [SCHIP]).” (Ceci, & Papierno, 2005, 149)

“These interventions run a gamut from highly targeted programs to remediate specific deficits (e.g., providing special services to teach poorly performing children basic number skills or to enhance the reading comprehension skills of middle school students), to somewhat less targeted programs aimed at increasing access to health care for the poor or reducing social problems (e.g., juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, emotional neglect, etc.) of children deemed to be at risk, to very broad interventions that are not targeted to any group, such as pro- viding tuition subsidies to increase college matriculation rates (e.g., Hope scholarships). “ (Ceci, & Papierno, 2005, 149)

“We refer to these latter interventions as universalized interventions to distinguish them from those that are targeted to a high-risk or disadvantaged group.” (Ceci, & Papierno, 2005, 149)

“One motivation for targeted interventions is what theorists from multiple disciplines (e.g., economics, sociology, psychology) have described as the Matthew effect.” (Ceci, & Papierno, 2005, 149)

“Looking across rather than within age groups, one sees that a similar gap widening occurs as older children increase their advantage over their younger counterparts when they are offered the same intervention given to younger children” (Ceci & Papierno, p.153).

“Early analyses of Sesame Street by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) appeared to show that increased viewing of the show did, in fact, promote improved intellectual development mainly of poor children, thereby narrowing the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children” (Ceci & Papierno, p.155).

“AP classes are an example of nontargeted interventions because they are made available to all eligible students who attain a given level of achievement, without regard to income or race. Unlike Sesame Street, however, AP offerings were never intended to narrow the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Because of the self selection process involved in deciding to take AP courses, this intervention was primarily utilized by the highest performing groups of achievers” (Ceci & Papierno, p.155).

“The basic idea of a cumulative, or “multiplier,” effect is not new; Stanovich (1986) discussed the concept in terms of the principle of “organism– environment correlation” to show that disparity increases when children with different genotypes or from different backgrounds are selectively exposed to different types of environments” ( Ceci & Papierno, p. 149)

“Black students with disabilities were more likely than students with disabilities from other racial/ethnic groups to be educated outside the regular classroom more than 60 percent of the day (28.1 percent). . . . They were also more likely to be educated in separate environments (5.2 percent). (p. 48)” (Blanchett, p. 379).

“Various agencies of the U.S. government, in an effort to impede the buildup of a cumulative gap between the nation’s most advantaged and disadvantaged children, have created targeted interventions that are designed and implemented with the goal of reducing disparities between these two groups. Interventions of this type aim to reduce group differences primarily by elevating the performance of the lowest group—whether the group is identified as poor, minority, low ability, or socially at-risk—toward the level of the higher group.” (Ceci& Papierno, 2005, 150)

“For example, in the domain of early reading, Shaywitz et al. (1995) succinctly summarized it as “the notion of cumulative advantages leading to still further advantage or, conversely, initial disadvantage being accentuated over time” (p. 894)” (Ceci & Papierno, p.149).