Special education has made considerable advances in research, policy, and practice in its short history. However, students from historically underserved groups continue to be disproportionately identified as requiring special education. Support for color-blind practices and policies can justify racial disproportionality in special education and…

Introduces the focus of articles that follow in the special issue, the education of minority or culturally diverse students with learning disabilities. Discusses the importance of examining the role of sociocultural variables in research on learning disabilities and what practitioners can do to incorporate sociocultural perspectives. Summaries of…

This article discusses increasing student diversity and its challenges to special education systems as more students need assistance to progress in the curriculum. It argues for whole school reorganization that reflects cultural understanding, permits flexibility in the use of resources, and is guided by clear accountability for student…

A study used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study to identify predictors of placement for eighth-grade ethnic-minority students (n=3,439) in learning-disability (LD) programs. Results found that although some factors predicted placement in LD programs for all ethnic groups, placement predictors also varied by student ethnicity.…

A study analyzed 2,378 empirical articles on ethnic minority students published in two learning disability and two special education journals over a 22-year period (1972-94). Studies focused on assessment and testing, sensory-perceptual processing, and placement issues. The majority also compared ethnic groups, used quantitative approaches, and…

This article reviews historically the overrepresentation of Latino and African-American students in special education; examines the influence of court cases, debate about systemic issues, demographic and socioeconomic changes, the construction of minority students' school failure, and the fallacy of the cultural diversity-disability analogy; and…

This brief, also available in Spanish, defines the concept of overrpresentation, identifies possible causes for the problem, and offers a variety of ways that parents and families can help prevent or decrease overrpresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education programs. (Contains 2 tables.) [This brief was…

This paper reports the findings of a study that assessed the effect of two classwide instructional grouping adaptation strategies on the math performance of English-language Latino learners in an urban public school in the Southwestern United States. An ABAB within-case design was implemented over a 12-week period to contrast the effectiveness of…