Race, Class, and Disproportionality: Reevaluating the Relationship Between Poverty and Special Education Placement

This article analyzes how a recent National Research Council report (2002) defined the impact of poverty in explaining the overrepresentation of minority students in special education. Echoing the perspective of mainstream special education literature, the report offered a latent theory of compromised development which indicated that minority students are more likely to be poor and that “being” poor heightens their exposure to risk factors that compromise human development and increase the need for special services. We elucidate how this theory oversimplifies the concept of “development” and consequently under-analyzes how the culture and organization of schools situates minority youths as academically and behaviorally deficient and places them at risk for special education placement.