Working with Challenging Parents of Students with Special Needs by Gorman Jean Cheng;

Author:Gorman, Jean Cheng; [GORMAN, JEAN CHENG]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1994234
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2004-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Not all parents of culturally diverse backgrounds may hold this view, but many do. This leads some parents to charge that the school system at large is guilty of racial discrimination and violations of civil rights, particularly for African American youth.

Some parents may see the education system as “designed to serve the interests of the dominant social, political, and economic classes and to place African Americans in a disvalued position” (Patton, 1998, p. 27). As representatives of the greater system, teachers may bear the brunt of parents’ mistrust. Many note that the subjectivity of teacher judgments in the referral process contributes to disproportionate referral and special education placement of African American students (see Patton). Parents may accuse you of being racist, simply because you represent the dominant culture.

Racism is both real and perceived. Arthur Ashe, the late tennis player and activist, was quoted as saying that “the toughest obstacle he faced was not his two open heart surgeries, or even AIDS, but rather, as he put it, ‘being born black in America’” (Dell, 2003, p. 7). Anyone who has been the victim of blatant racism (e.g., being called epithets by strangers) and discrimination (e.g., being denied a job or promotion) can become sensitive to more subtle forms of racism, as well as perceive racism where none exists. When African American, Hispanic, and other parents are given less-than-satisfactory reasons for why their children are being placed in special classes or denied services, it is understandable that some would suspect they are the targets of racism. Parents’ experiences as schoolchildren are also likely to impact how they address racism with their children. For example, some Hispanics’ “lingering distrust of educators stems from the fact that [they] … were hit for speaking in Spanish” (Jones, 2001, p. 21, italics in original). Teaching about racial identity and racism is a core issue in African American parenting (Mosley-Howard & Evans, 2000), which may result in students harboring the same mistrust as their parents.

In truth, multiple factors account for the overrepresentation of African Americans in special education, only some of which involve teachers. Some suggest that teacher preparation programs, and thus teachers, adhere to a Eurocentric framework (Talbert-Johnson, 1998) and share the same values and expectations of the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant macro culture (Spindler & Spindler, 1994). As a result, all students, despite their cultures, languages, and values, are expected to conform to the norm. Students who do not match this Eurocentric picture are consequently identified as deviant. For example, students’ communication styles (e.g., volume, tone) may be culturally consistent, but may be deemed inappropriate in the classroom. Similarly, “misclassification of culturally diverse students in special education … may result when the behavioral expectations differ between culturally diverse students’ homes and school environments” (Aaroe & Nelson, 2000, pp. 314–315). This is exacerbated by the fact that while the number of students of diverse cultures is steadily increasing, the teaching force remains largely Caucasian (see Aaroe & Nelson).

One study comparing African American children and European American children

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