Are minority children disproportionately represented in early intervention and early childhood special education?

Morgan, Paul L., Farkas, George, Hillemeier, Marianne M., & Maczuga, Steve. (2012). Are minority children disproportionately represented in early intervention and early childhood special education? Educational Researcher, 41(9), 339-351.


The question of whether minority children are represented disproportionately in early childhood intervention programs and special education programs could be looked at from several angles. As I read this article, I realized that I had been viewing this problem from only one of those angles. Much of what I’ve chosen to read on this topic has presented the position that minority children, and particularly minority males, are over-represented in these programs. This is presented as a bad thing, and a result of discrimination. The big idea behind this position is that conceptions of ability and disability are socially and culturally constructed, and when a child does not fit the norm of what is expected in “mainstream” (read: white, middle-class, female-oriented) schools and classrooms he or she (more commonly he) is considered “disabled,” which often leads to special education referral. Articles that take this position cite numbers that show children of color being referred to special education at rates higher than the proportion of those children in the larger population. If you view special education placement as a negative and potentially limiting, even damaging outcome, you will view those disproportionate numbers as discriminatory, and will be concerned about them. That has been my own position lately, and I am not saying that position has altered for the most part.

However, Morgan et al here present another view that I must consider if I am to be intellectually responsible. They present numbers here that lead them to conclude that at least in early childhood special education and other interventions at the early childhood level (they looked at four-year-old children), there is indeed a disproportionality, but it goes in the opposite direction: minority children are not receiving services as often or as early as non-minority children are. After controlling for numerous confounding variables (such as parental socioeconomic status and education, maternal age, marital status, birth weight and birth complications, among others), the researchers concluded that at least at this early age, non-Hispanic Whites were represented in special education and intervention programs disproportionately, but in this case, the percentages of non-Hispanic Whites receiving services by far exceeded their percentages in the population, with minority percentages receiving services less frequently than their percentages in the population. This is the opposite of the way I had thought things were going, and these authors see that as a bad thing, a discriminatory thing that denies needed help to minority children.

So which position do I believe? No matter which way you see it, disproportionality is a cause for concern. If percentages receiving services do not approximate percentages in the general population, then something we do not want is going on. It is discrimination, whether you see the situation as discrimination that equates difference with deficit or discrimination based on unequal access to services. Which one it is may depend on the age of the children as well as on the nature of the learning difficulty. It is clear to me that the issue is more complex than I had previously perceived it to be.

One stunning finding for me here was that children who had more well-care visits to a physician in early childhood were more likely to be identified as having learning problems earlier than were children who did not see a physician as often. Thus access to health care looks like an important factor. In the U.S., access to health care relates to socioeconomic status, and socioeconomic status relates to racial/ethnic group membership. One wonders if recent health care reforms will make progress in turning this situation around. While I am hopeful, I remain skeptical. These relationships are long-entrenched in our society, and will not be turned around overnight. Because health care policy is linked to the political situation in the U.S., changes in political power could lead to more changes in health care policy as history unfolds.

To conclude, I found this article useful because it clarified for me how complex the issues that surround who is and is not referred for special education really are. These issues have to be viewed from multiple perspectives if we are to have any hope of finding solutions to the problem of disproportionate representation in these programs.