The special education system is complicated, but especially so for Latinx families.
One San Diego student though, is hoping to help address that.
In February, Mariana Herrera, a bilingual resource specialist and master’s student at Alliant International University, will lead a workshop at the National Association of School Psychologists conference, where she aims to shine a light on the segregation and overrepresentation of Latinx students in California’s special education programs.
“I started seeing a lot of disparities and started noticing there are a lot of Latinx students in the special education system,” Herrera said in a interview this week.
“That kind of raised a red flag for me as an educator … so I’m trying to see how we can incorporate strategies and culturally responsive practices in order to change this.”
Although special education has made many strides as a discipline, disproportionality and issues with the referral process are not a new phenomenon — especially here in California.
For example, a 1970 class-action lawsuit, Diana v. State Board of Education, focused on how Diana, a Mexican American student, and eight other students were improperly placed into a special education class based on an IQ test that was exclusively istered in English. The court found that the test was both linguistically and culturally biased, and ordered educators to re-assess students in their primary language, which led to a significant increase in their test scores.
That case helped to spotlight one of the issues that existed in the assessment and referral process that led to disproportionality among students in special education, but it’s a problem that educators and researchers say persists.
Today, roughly 54 percent of students in California’s public school system are identified as Latinx, but they for about 60 percent of students with disabilities in the state, according to the California Department of Education.
Herrera, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico as an adult, sees several factors that contribute to an overrepresentation of Latinx students in special education, many of them tied to the referral process.
The process itself, she said, is rather complex, with many stakeholders and variables that can factor into determining eligibility.
“Talking about eligibility in special education is sort of like putting a puzzle together,” Herrera said. “You have to take into consideration … the schools, the educators, the environment, language, the child, the families.”
That complexity can be compounded as it relates to Latinx students because of the lack of bilingual assessments and bilingual s, another factor Herrera intends to highlight at the National Association of School Psychologists workshop. She notes that research by the NASP found that 86 percent of school psychologists are fluent in English only, and of those who are fluent in a second language, only 8 percent are able to provide services in that language.
There’s also a serious need, Herrera said, to better explain the special education referral process to parents and other stakeholders.
In her two decades practicing as a school psychologist, Dr. Vangie Akridge, director of Alliant’s school counseling and psychology program, has observed a similar issue. She added that one needs to be cognizant of the cultural and language barriers and focus on making sure parents clearly understand what educators are saying.
“School psychology is one of those fields where there’s lots of acronyms and lots of big words to describe how people learn and how they process,” Akridge said. “If we as educators are not bringing that down and making it digestible not only for parents but for other people in the room, then we lose the value of the work we’ve done and the help we are trying to create.”
Herrera said that teachers play a pivotal role in the special education process as well, and it is important to make sure teachers are provided the training and resources they need.
She said that, unfortunately, some teachers are put in the position of having to make initial referrals despite lacking the training to do so.
“We do have to set up our educators for success,” Herrera said.
Simultaneously, special education also has to be viewed as a team process, according to Herrera and Akridge.
Akridge said that sometimes a general education teacher who is teaching math or language arts, for example, may reach the point where they are not sure what to do and feel like they need to tag in and move a child somewhere else. On the one hand, she said, you respect them acknowledging the need for help, but that sometimes leads the teacher to remove themselves from being involved with the child and the process.
“I’ve been in special education long enough to see some folks from general education take a hands-off approach,” Akridge said. “Special education providers are like, ‘This is OUR child.'”
Herrera hopes the NASP workshop can play a part in helping to address the problem.
Among other things, her goal is to better prepare educators and school psychologists to practice culturally responsive instruction and analyze academic data of Latinx students who are being referred to special education; increase awareness of different assessment tools and tests to assist in the referral process; and teach people how to explain the referral process in Spanish to families.
In the long run, she says, it’s going to take a community effort to truly address the issue.
“It’s not a school psychologist that comes in with a magic wand,” Herrera said. “You have to include the whole team, and everybody has a different responsibility.”
