Overrepresentation In Special Education Research Paper

Special education is specifically designed to provide quality instruction, support, and services to all students with disabilities to aid their unique learning needs. Since the 1970s, there has been a consistent overrepresentation of minority groups, particularly African Americans, in these special education programs (Artiles, 1994). Many academic studies in the present focus on identifying the issue of overrepresentation in special education and addressing the related factors that lead to it, but very rarely do they focus on how certain resources, like children’s books, can impact children in special education. Nelson Beats the Odds is the first children’s book of its kind created to directly reach out to help African American students diagnosed

In the first section of the paper, I examine the overrepresentation of black disabled students in special education programs in order to discuss how race intersects with disability and how negative cultural stereotypes are reinforced. In the second section, I discuss the issues with the language used to describe disability and language has a bigger negative consequence on black disabled students than white disabled student. In the last section, I investigate the negative consequences of using an overcoming narrative to inspire students in special education. With this critique, I hope to add to the conversation of overrepresentation in disability studies by examining how a popular well-known children’s graphic novel meant to inspire minority students adds to the problem of stigmatization and overcoming disability

The intersection of racialization and disability can be examined through a different cultural lens, besides teacher-student cultural miscommunication, that includes influences of poverty and society. Nelson Beats the Odds is a personal reflection of Sidney’s experiences as a black disabled student in special education. The tiny town of Tappahannock, Virginia, where Sidney went to school and where the context of Nelson’s story takes place, has a demographic of 48.82% African American and a poverty level 31.6% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). This means about half of population are black and about a third of the residents live in poverty in Tappahannock. Poverty among African Americans is an important risk factor that contributes to their diagnosis of disabilities like ADHD (Basch, 2011). The author Sidney, like Nelson, was given the label of ADHD and placed into special education until he graduated from high school (Sidney, 2015). African American students living in poverty may prioritize other things that are familiar to them, such as pop culture activities like basketball and music, instead of school as quick routes to success and opportunity outside of poverty. In the book, Nelson was described as “inattentive and disinterested in class” and