2 - Distinguishing a True Disability from “Something Else”: Part I. Current Challenges to Providing Valid, Reliable, and Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Disability Evaluations

Summary

This chapter focuses on the over-referral of minority and bilingual students for special education. The authors discuss disability under the law and distinguishing true disability from academic gaps. Disproportionate referral of students into special education can be caused by misdiagnosis based on socioeconomic status, second language acquisition, dialectal differences, and other issues related to lack of prior knowledge. Over-referral can also occur due to flawed disability evaluations based on models and tests that lack sound psychometric foundations. Speech-language pathologists often rely on these instruments, unaware that updates to these tests are incongruent with current research and inconsistent with the standards required for assessment instruments as described within the federal law on special education. Often currently used standardized tests preserve racial and ethnic biases, biases in vocabulary, and linguistic biases in disability evaluations for second language learners and for bidialectal students that the research shows too many evaluators continue to use. This chapter is expected to influence policy and to change the way in which disability evaluations are conducted in determining special education in culturally and linguistically diverse children.