Demographic Study
Special education is beneficial to students who really have disabilities, but unfortunately students are being placed under special education curriculum most likely due to minority issues. ESE students face many challenges a day, school being the main part of this challenge. There are millions of students nationwide who are suffering from cultural bias which leads to disproportionate representation. This specifically targets CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) students. Some issues that I will discuss are the impacts of over representation and under representation of certain demographic groups in special education/gifted programs with supporting data and the impacts of Education reform and legislation that have tried …show more content…
According to the Student Discipline Data by Race and Gender in Florida, 164,993 total students were suspended out of school. Out of 164,993 total students’, 70,423 were African American. When student’s needs are not met, we see a shift in the student’s personality, classroom behavior, learning ability, etc. This can accompany the overrepresentation issue. For example, putting African Americans in special education programs when not necessary, results in isolation from the general population of the student’s in the school. They might be in a restricted classroom and are treated differently than other students of the school, due to being part of a special education program. This might cause tension and behavior issues because of the difference in treatment and the behavior issues will lead to punishment. We see this pattern in all the districts in Florida under every category of punishment. Another factor could be personal home life. We see a lot of culturally diverse students as well as poverty stricken students who have a difficult home life. These might be some factors that may cause them to act out which could also lead to drastic retention rates we see. In the Retention Rates Data for 2014-2105 in Florida, 7,674 kindergarteners were retained. We see the most retained students coming from Hillsborough and Dade County. According to TampaBay.com, “The reason for the small numbers might have less to do with children's …show more content…
For example, George W. Bush enacted the No Child Left behind Act in 2001. The NCLB Act was created to close the achievement gap and would give funding to schools. To receive funding, improvements in was to be made. NCLB would use state assessment as the means to see if there was improvement. One pro about the NCLD Act was that there was a common knowledge that all teachers could agree need to be taught and that all states were on the same curriculum per grade level and that it was state mandated for all states. Also, students with disabilities that had their own IEP or 504 plan had special accommodation when taking the tests. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of cons. One of the cons in this act was that the NCLB was seeing how the school was improving and not the students. Schools wanted the funding so they would teach to the test and not to what the student really needed. Another con would be test taking. Not all students test well, and holding a child back for not testing well can be what is causing these high retention rates in Florida. NCLB was supposed to close the achievement, but now more than ever we see a wider achievement gap towards minorities. According to Educational Week.org, “By 2010, 38 percent of schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress, up from 29 percent in 2006. An opinion poll released in…… nearly half of school
Special education is beneficial to students who really have disabilities, but unfortunately students are being placed under special education curriculum most likely due to minority issues. ESE students face many challenges a day, school being the main part of this challenge. There are millions of students nationwide who are suffering from cultural bias which leads to disproportionate representation. This specifically targets CLD (culturally and linguistically diverse) students. Some issues that I will discuss are the impacts of over representation and under representation of certain demographic groups in special education/gifted programs with supporting data and the impacts of Education reform and legislation that have tried …show more content…
According to the Student Discipline Data by Race and Gender in Florida, 164,993 total students were suspended out of school. Out of 164,993 total students’, 70,423 were African American. When student’s needs are not met, we see a shift in the student’s personality, classroom behavior, learning ability, etc. This can accompany the overrepresentation issue. For example, putting African Americans in special education programs when not necessary, results in isolation from the general population of the student’s in the school. They might be in a restricted classroom and are treated differently than other students of the school, due to being part of a special education program. This might cause tension and behavior issues because of the difference in treatment and the behavior issues will lead to punishment. We see this pattern in all the districts in Florida under every category of punishment. Another factor could be personal home life. We see a lot of culturally diverse students as well as poverty stricken students who have a difficult home life. These might be some factors that may cause them to act out which could also lead to drastic retention rates we see. In the Retention Rates Data for 2014-2105 in Florida, 7,674 kindergarteners were retained. We see the most retained students coming from Hillsborough and Dade County. According to TampaBay.com, “The reason for the small numbers might have less to do with children's …show more content…
For example, George W. Bush enacted the No Child Left behind Act in 2001. The NCLB Act was created to close the achievement gap and would give funding to schools. To receive funding, improvements in was to be made. NCLB would use state assessment as the means to see if there was improvement. One pro about the NCLD Act was that there was a common knowledge that all teachers could agree need to be taught and that all states were on the same curriculum per grade level and that it was state mandated for all states. Also, students with disabilities that had their own IEP or 504 plan had special accommodation when taking the tests. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of cons. One of the cons in this act was that the NCLB was seeing how the school was improving and not the students. Schools wanted the funding so they would teach to the test and not to what the student really needed. Another con would be test taking. Not all students test well, and holding a child back for not testing well can be what is causing these high retention rates in Florida. NCLB was supposed to close the achievement, but now more than ever we see a wider achievement gap towards minorities. According to Educational Week.org, “By 2010, 38 percent of schools were failing to make adequate yearly progress, up from 29 percent in 2006. An opinion poll released in…… nearly half of school