The Michigan Chronicle

Classrooms should be places of opportunity, not obstacles. But for many students with disabilities, especially students of color and English learners, school often reinforces the inequities it’s supposed to erase. Black students, for example, have been overrepresented in special education since 1968, when the U.S. Office for Civil Rights first began tracking school district data. The starkest disparities appear in categories that depend on perception, such as learning disabilities and emotional disturbances, where bias too often determines outcomes. We know that students of color, with the exception of Asian students, are identified for special education at a higher rate than their white peers. Black students are 40% more likely to be identified with a disability and are three times more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled.