Chapter 11: Implementing Culturally Responsive Behavior Management Techniques To Teach Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Learners with Special Needs

It has become very clear that there is greater cultural and linguistic diversity within our nation and within the United States public school system than ever before. According to a report by the National Center for Educational Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences (2010) entitled Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities, the demographic pattern of the

In addition, current statistics show that 1 in 5 children live in poverty and about 1 in 10 children have limited proficiency in English.

General and special educators are faced with the challenges of implementing protections provided by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA, 2004) to guarantee that culturally and linguistically divers (CLD) students are not disproportionately represented in special education programs. Despite the implementation of this law, educational, socioeconomic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical factors have contributed to the disproportionate representation of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CLD ) students with special needs in terms of (a) education and placement classification, (b) least access to programs, services, and resources, (c) an individualized general education curriculum, and (d) design and implementation of effective instruction and classroom management procedures (Adelman & Taylor, 2011; Artiles, Rueda, Salzaar, & Higareda, 2005; Salend, Duhaney, & Montgomery, 2002; Utley, Obiakor, & Bakken, 2011; Utley & Salend, 2006). According to Garcia and Conroy (2002) and Kewalramani, Gilbertson, Fox, and Provasnik (2007), five prevalent trends in national data are evident: (a) once identified, CLD students from every major racial/ethnic group are more likely than white students with disabilities to be removed from general education classrooms for all or part of their school day; (b) African American students are most often overidentified in the disability categories that have the highest correlation with isolation from the general education setting, mental retardation and emotional disturbance; (c) Hispanics have substantially lower risk for mental retardation and emotional disturbance compared to Whites, and even lower compared to African American, even though His-panics and African American share a far greater risk for poverty, exposure to environmental toxins and low academic achievement; (d) there are large disparities in cognitive disability identification rates between boys and girls generally, and especially between African American boys and girls; and (e) school suspensions are being used with increasing frequency, in a disproportionate manner relative to CLD students, and for infractions that should be handled with less intensive disciplinary strategies.