On March 7, 2003, the  Federation, in conjunction with the Foundation for Child Development, hosted a  Science and Public Policy briefing relevant to the pending reauthorization of  the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).  Stefanie DeLuca, PhD,  and James Rosenbaum, PhD, presented their  most recent research findings  on the relationship between neighborhood type and placement in special education  classes.    

Introduction

In 1976, in response to a  Supreme Court consent decree in a lawsuit against the Chicago Housing Authority  and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Chicago public housing  residents and those on the waiting list for Section 8 housing were moved out of  the inner-city.  Chicago's Gautreaux housing relocation program began moving  4,000 poor, inner-city minority families in public housing to subsidized housing  in suburban and urban areas. 

The Gautreaux Program provided  researchers with the unique opportunity to test the effects of helping  low-income families move to better neighborhoods with better labor markets and  schools.  The program allowed the problems typically associated with assessing  the effects on neighborhood on sociological and psychosocial outcomes (so-called  "selection effects" that occur when the sub-population being examined may be  different from the entire population because they, unlike the remainder of the  group, have chosen to move) to be side-stepped; the population of blacks being  moved to the suburbs did not independently seek out the opportunity to move to  the suburbs but were instead all presented with the same chance.  There were two  separate Gautreaux groups: a group who moved to the suburbs and a group who were  moved from the inner-city to another area of city.    Results  General findings Children who moved to the  suburbs were much more likely to graduate from high school, attend college,  attend four-year colleges (vs. two-year colleges) and to be employed and to have  jobs with better pay and benefits.  The mothers of these suburban children had  higher employment rates than those who moved to the city, a difference that was  particularly evident for adults who were unemployed prior to participating in  the program.  

Special Education Results

Since the population of  families placed in the suburban school districts did not differ on any  potentially influential criteria from those families who moved to another  location within the city, you wouldn't expect to find differential rates of  placement in special education programs.  However, the rate of placement in  special education classes was twice as high in the suburbs as it was in the city  schools (see Table 3a in PowerPoint).  The higher the percentage of black  inhabitants in the new neighborhood, the lower the odds of placement in special  education (see Table 3b), and the wealthier the suburban neighborhood, the  higher the rate of placement in special education for the black students (see  Table 3c).     

Discussion

Why would placement in special  education be dependent upon neighborhood context?  There are two possible  explanations: 1) Relativity.  Assessments are made relative to the  performance and characteristics of other students in the school, and 2)  Cultural factors.  Assessments are based on different criteria in different  schools. 

Two books, one portraying a  liberal perspective (Losen and Orfield, 2002) and the other taking a more  conservative stance (Finn et al, 2001), each agree that there are serious  problems in assessing special education needs, that black students receive the  diagnosis more often that white students, and that there is no racial  discrepancy for the "hard" special education categories (e.g., hearing, visual,  and physical impairments), only for the "soft"  categories (e.g., learning disabled).  It is possible that cultural factors may  affect assessment and placement.  For example, black children report less  understanding of assignments and complete less of their homework, despite  spending the same amount of time on homework as white students.  Cultural  knowledge may be affecting students' understanding of the assignments and the  teachers' interpretations of the students' work habits. 

Finn (2001) suggests that there  are undesirable consequences of special education, including:      

• "Mission Creep." The tendency to keep on expanding special education until its goals become unattainable and its purpose clouded   
• "One Size Fits All" approach "which has created a legal and policy straitjacket, rife with litigation."
• Perverse incentives for parents.  Some parents try to get their children placed in special education classes so that the students will, as required by law, be allowed more time to complete standardized tests such as the SATs, giving them a potential advantage over students not allowed the extra time.    
• Perverse incentives for schools.  "Many teachers and principals find that special education is their only source of help for children who need extra attention and    the only remedy for classrooms plagued by disruptive youngsters."     
• Distortion of priorities. "As the largest unfunded federal mandate in K-12 education, special education distorts priorities [and] requires a school system to set aside sufficient funds for special education before it can pay for any of its other programs."       
• Double standard for discipline. "Disagreement continues about the extent to which the IDEA's procedural requirements prevent school administrators from disciplining disruptive special education students this issue warrants further study"  

Impact on IDEA and  Education Policy

What kind of impact should the  Gautreaux Program findings have on IDEA legislation? 

IDEA legislation contains a  prohibition on allowing culture to influence placement.  If, as researchers  believe, it is difficult/impossible to avoid the influence of cultural factors  or relative comparisons to other students on achievement and assessment, then  compliance with this prohibition may be impossible.  Rather than focus on an  unattainable goal, Rosenbaum and DeLuca suggest that it might be more fruitful to:

• Create more valid, less biased assessments     
• Reduce the implications of labels for inclusion and exclusion     
• Provide diverse tools for assessment     
• Concentrate on prevention and intervention, the best ways to reduce later learning problems.  Funding for prevention and intervention programs should not be diverted to other program areas.   
• Beware of costly mandates that limit schools' help for other students (some states have mandated that special education receive its funding before all other school programs are funded, leaving little or nothing for students not in special ed.)     
• Beware of legal entitlements     
• Beware of unintended consequences of policies     
• Invest in research and development before spending money on programs and mandates that have not been tested and proven 
  
  References
  
  Losen,  D.J. and Orfield, G., eds. (2002). Racial Inequity in Special Education.  Harvard Education Press.
  
  *Finn,  C.E., Rotherham, A.J., & Hakanson, C.R. (2001). Rethinking Special Education  for a New Century. Public Policy Institute and the Thomas B. Fordham  Foundation.
  
  *(This  volume of papers is available online at no cost:  http://www.edexcellence.net/library/special_ed/)