SD18 - The Inclusion of Special-Needs Children


Executive Summary:
The 1995 General Assembly Senate Joint Resolution 361 required the Virginia Department of Education to report to the Senate Committee on Education. This report is divided into two sections: Section I addresses inclusion of students with disabilities; and Section II addresses African-American students with disabilities. Conclusions drawn from the report are provided at the end of Section II. A list of references is provided at Appendix C.

The Department supports the federal and state requirements governing placement of students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment and uses mechanisms for implementing compliance with such requirements. Virginia has in the past, and continues to be, responsive to localities in their movement toward less restrictive placements for students with disabilities. Training and technical assistance on effective practices for including children with disabilities in regular classrooms is available upon request of the public schools. Data were collected on the number of self-contained students with disabilities assigned to regular classrooms. These data suggest that many school divisions do include these students in classrooms with non-disabled peers.

Data were compiled to address the request for the proportion of African-American students by special education disability category compared to the proportion of African-American students in the total student population. The percentage of African-American students in the general population is 25.8 percent; in the special education population, it is 27.8 percent. Although there is a higher proportion of African-American students in the disability categories associated with cognitive/mental retardation and autism, the disproportion in these disability categories does not appear to occur in every local school division. Without conducting a case-by-case analysis, it cannot be determined what factors underlie the difference in proportion of African-Americans to other ethnic groups identified as needing special education. The Virginia Department of Education, in partnership with the United States Office for Civil Rights, is developing strategies to examine minority over-representation in special education through its monitoring of local school divisions.