“Many forms of intervention, across different domains, have the surprising effect of widening preexisting gaps between disadvantaged youth and their advantaged counterparts—if such interventions are made available to all students, not just to the disadvantaged. Whether this widening of gaps is incongruent with American interests and values requires an awareness of this gap-widening potential when interventions are universalized and a national policy that addresses the psychological, political, economic, and moral dimensions of elevating the top students—tomorrow’s business and science leaders—and/or elevating the bottom students to redress past inequalities and reduce the future costs associated with them. This article is a first step in bringing this dilemma to the attention of scholars and policymakers and prodding a national discussion (Ceci, 2005, p.149).”

Blanchett - Despite the fact that African American and other students of color, students labeled as having disabilities, and poor students in urban schools are indisputably linked in terms of the quality of schooling they have experienced, few attempts have been made to examine the relationship between special education and urban education. Both students placed in special education and those who attend urban schools have a long history of being miseducated, undereducated, and treated inequitably by the American educational system, with the American educational system at times excluding these students altogether from receiving a free and appropriate public education. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide (a) a historical analysis of special education and the treatment of students with disabilities prior to the Brown decision; (b) an analysis of the challenges that students with disabilities, African American and students of color, poor students in urban schools, and students affected by all three have historically experienced in their quest to receive a free and appropriate education in the American educational system; (c) a discussion that illustrates that special education is the new tool for the resegregation of African American and other students of color in special education; (d) a discussion of who the real beneficiaries of failed urban schools are and why they resist providing an equitable education to all children; and (e) specific examples of what it means to go for broke in calling out educational inequities and advocating for African American and other students of color, poor students, students with disabilities, students in urban settings, and students affected by all of these factors and issues.

o contemporary thinkers have invoked it to refer to the amplification of any initial advantage (e.g., economic resources, health status, cognitive ability) that leads to cumulative differences that widen preexisting gaps (Walberg & Tsai, 1983). 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). This effect has been observed in numerous areas affecting children (e.g., in the use of cognitive strategies [Gaultney, 1998] and comprehension [Nicholson, 1999; Stanovich, 1986]), as well as in areas affecting adults (e.g., pay differentials [Tang, 1996] and accumulation of scientific prestige [Merton, 1968]) (Ceci, 2005, p.149).

• 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, 2005, p.149).

“In addition to prohibiting racial segregation in public education, the Brown decision was especially important in securing appropriate educational services and opportunities for students with disabilities.

o The very children who are reading well and who have good vocabularies will read more, learn more word meanings, and hence read even better. Children with inadequate vocabularies— who read slowly and without enjoyment—read less, and as a result have slower development of vocabulary knowledge, which inhibits further growth in reading ability.

segregation and desegregation

“A performance-based benefit operates when both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups participate in the same intervention but the former group performs disproportionately better on some outcome measure.” (Ceci 153).

As special education theory evolved and resulted in actual educational practice, it became very clear that many students with disabilities were being educated in segregated self-contained settings with little to no exposure or access to their nondisabled peers. More important, these students did not have access to the same curricula content as their nondisabled peers (Blanchett 2002, pg. 375).

“The Brown decision provided advocates and parents of students with disabilities a legal precedent for challenging the educational inequities that children with disabilities experienced.

They reported that although the intervention improved the vocabulary of all children, analyses of pre- and post test vocabulary measures revealed significant interactions between testing conditions and children’s ability. Of particular relevance to this article is their finding that higher ability children demonstrated significantly greater benefit from both the repeated exposure and the explanation of target vocabulary words (i.e., greater accuracy in the use of target words).” (Ceci 153).

• It turns out, however, that when these gap-narrowing interventions are universalized— given not only to the group of children who most need assistance but also to the more advantaged group (regardless of whether the latter is identified as White, rich, high ability, etc.), a surprising and unanticipated consequence sometimes occurs: The preintervention gap between the disadvantaged group and the advantaged group is actually widened as a consequence of making the intervention universally available. This is because, as we will show, although the disadvantaged children who most need the intervention do usually gain significantly from it, the higher functioning or more advantaged children occasionally benefit even more from the intervention (Ceci, 2005, p.150).

“For some social programs, the advantage of being made universally available is that the people who have the greatest need for the intervention maybe more likely to utilize it than their more advantaged peers if it is not advertised as a program targeted to them.” (Ceci 154).

If society deems the improvement of all children as a paramount goal, regardless of preexisting differences, then such demonstrations may not pose a problem because they elevate the advantaged group to levels greater than what could be achieved by them in the absence of the interventions. However, if policymakers intend some cognitive interventions to close preexisting gaps, then such demonstrations underscore the need for more focused, targeted interventions that boost the lower scoring group without adding to the higher scoring group’s preintervention advantage (Ceci, 2005, p.153).

".. Advocates of special education fought to develop special education programs because general education was often not inclusive of students with disabilities and, as such, was not meeting their educational needs.” (Blanchett, p. 373)

o In the economic domain, similar examples of utilization differences exist. Many economic interventions are made available without regard to income or SES, with the result that these interventions end up disproportionately benefiting middle- and upper-income students. For example, Dynarski (2000) showed that President Clinton’s Hope scholarships benefited college-bound students who came from middle- and upper-class homes more than they benefited poor students (i.e., middle- and upper-class students were more likely to use them)

This favoring of students from advantaged backgrounds was apparent even after controlling for cognitive aptitude (see also Cameron & Heckman, 1999, for similar results). Along the same lines, Stanley (1999) found in a retrospective analysis of Korean War veterans that college subsidies associated with the various provisions of the GI Bills were used disproportionately by returning veterans from advantaged backgrounds. Once again, gaps that may have existed prior to the implementation of these nontargeted interventions were widened as a result of the differential utilization of such programs, regardless of whether the programs were intended to produce this effect

“One can imagine from an ethical position a case being made that every student has an intrinsic right to have access to any intervention that is known to improve performance.” (Ceci 157).

Likewise, one could imagine that some early childcare programs have more positive effects on the disadvantaged. For example, available evidence appears to support prekindergarten programs only for disadvantaged children; children of college-educated parents who participate in such programs do not appear to benefit more than matched peers who do not participate, probably because collegeeducated parents already provide equivalent resources to their children outside the confines of such programs (Ramey & Ramey, 1998).

Thus, any comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons of universalizing interventions must include a consideration of the type of intervention and its target audience. This leads to the suggestion that interventions will be most effective if they are both targeted and targeted to the right subgroups. So a child-care policy may not be optimal for children who already get enough cognitive stimulation at home, and programs for gifted children may not be optimal if directed toward children who do not have the requisite basic skills to profit (Ceci, 2005, p.154).

“The objective here, however, may not be to reduce inequalities in any general sense but rather to remove impediments that particularly apply to some groups but not to others—impediments to reaching a level of competence that one is capable of attaining.” (Ceci 159).

o As far as impediments with sources external to the individual are concerned, it might well be argued that it is reasonable to provide special help or special services for those who would otherwise be handicapped, impaired, or disadvantaged as a result of their group membership (as a result of where they live, their ethnicity, social circumstances, institutional discrimination, etc.). The objective here, however, may not be to reduce inequalities in any general sense but rather to remove impediments that particularly apply to some groups but not to others—impediments to reaching a level of competence that one is capable of attaining.

In such an analysis, we agree that clearly identifying the role of institutional discrimination and power differentials in producing differences between haves and have-nots becomes central in order to remedy roadblocks to utilizing interventions described earlier that may be the result of oppressive living conditions (Ceci, 2005, p.158).

Undoubtedly, there is a mix of interventions, some targeted and some universal, that produces the best overall cost– benefit ratio for a nation on political, economic, and moral grounds. To some extent this is an empirical question, but the point of this article is to foster a national dialogue on the heretofore undiscussed social, political, ethical, and economic aspects of this issue. America has no national policy that (a) explicitly frames intervention programs in terms of consensual political philosophy that is mindful of both the need to elevate the top students and the need to redress past injustice, (b) acknowledges the types of outcomes that we have described here, and (c) considers what mix of interventions will best achieve national interests and values. In closing, we reiterate that we take no position on this debate but hope that our analysis is a first step in promoting a needed discussion of whether national policies should be aimed at raising the top students, bottom students, or both, and the political, moral, and economic ramifications associated with each of these options (Ceci, 2005, p.159).

“Although the 1980s gave birth to many special education reform ideas, the most radical of the special education reform ideas was the theory of inclusion.

"Advocates of inclusion have been very successful in arguing that incorporating these students is consistent with the concept of normalization, the disability rights movement, the major tenets of the civil rights movement,and the promise of Brown..."