Chapter 2: Disproportionate Representation in Special Education: A Persistent Stain on the Field

More than 40 years following Lloyd Dunn’s (1968) classic article characterizing failures in special education, the educational literature continues to systematically document a persistent problem of disproportionate representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds (i.e., students from racial, ethnic, linguistic, geographic, and economically disadvantaged minority groups) in special education (Artiles, Kozleski, Trent, Osher, & Ortiz, 2010; Harry & Klingner, 2006; McCall & Skrtic, 2009; Salend, Garrick Duhaney, & Montgomery, 2002; Samson & Lesaux, 2009; Skiba et al., 2008; Sullivan, 2011). In his seminal work, Dunn critiqued the racially biased, instructionally inferior, and psycho-socially damaging nature of segregated special education programs and suggested that the disproportionate representation of ethnically and linguistically diverse students in segregated special education classrooms should raise significant educational concerns (Skiba et al., 2008). In addition to being the focus of much attention in the academic literature, nationally, the problem of disproportionality also has garnered much attention, having been studied twice by the National Research Council (NRC, 1982; 2002).