Today's Boston Globe on the Special Ed gender gap....
Special ed gender gap stirs worry
Some say boys singled out for wrong reasons
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff and Bill Dedman, Globe Correspondent,
7/8/2002
Public schools in Massachusetts and nationwide place twice as many boys as girls
in special education, a gender gap that extends from the biggest cities to the toniest
suburbs to the tiniest towns, according to a Globe analysis of state and federal data.
But the size of the gender disparity in special education is not uniform from district to
district. For example, for children diagnosed as emotionally disturbed, one
special-education category, boys make up 90 percent of emotionally disturbed
students in Kansas City, but only 55 percent in Milwaukee.
The more subjective the diagnosis of the student, the wider the gender gap, records
show. In Massachusetts schools, boys are slightly more likely than girls to be
identified with hearing or vision problems, and 11/2 times as likely to be retarded. But
boys are twice as likely to be labeled with a learning disability, and more than three
times as likely to be called emotionally disturbed.
Such differences raise a recurring worry: that special education is a way to push
misbehaving students - mostly boys - or slower ones out of regular classrooms.
Superintendents and special-education advocates insist this isn't commonplace, but
Massachusetts Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said the gap suggests it.
''More boys get referred because they tend to act out. And it's an overidentification,
because very often they don't necessarily have a disability at all. It's just that they're
active,'' Driscoll said. ''Young girls tend to be passive and underidentified, because
they're compliant, and sometimes it hides a disability. ... We have a responsibility to
respond to these kinds of statistics, which we see all the time.''
Of the Commonwealth's roughly 160,000 disabled public school students, 66 percent
are boys, according to 2000-01 enrollment figures from the state Department of
Education. That figure matches national numbers that show that two-thirds of boys
are classified as special-needs, receiving help for anything from severe physical
impairments to behavior disorders.
The disparity in special education seems to depend as much on geography as
disability. For example, in affluent Sherborn west of Boston, 77 percent of the town's
special-education students last year were boys. Next door in Dover, the number
dropped to 68 percent. In Burlington, nearly 70 percent of the town's special-needs
students were boys - but just across Route 128 in Woburn, it was 60 percent.
There's one elementary school in Orleans on Cape Cod, and boys comprised about
80 percent of its special-education enrollment. There's also one elementary school in
Nahant on the North Shore - and boys made up 60 percent of the special-needs
students, figures show.
The disparity from town to town flummoxes superintendents and authorities on
special education. They say they are aware of cognitive, medical, and psychological
reasons for the overall 2-to-1 gender gap. But those well-researched differences
between boys' and girls' development do not explain why a boy in Deerfield is almost
twice as likely to end up in special education as his peer in Williamsburg, according
to the data. The gap persists even though special-education referrals are governed by
state and federal laws.
''I suspect you get varying histories from town to town and varying cultures around
special ed,'' said Martha Ziegler, founder of the Federation for Children with Special
Needs, a Boston advocacy group. ''It always comes down to what's going on in the
regular classrooms plus the outlook and practices of the administrators all the way to
the superintendent.''
Nationally, special education is largely a boys club, with 1.9 million girls and 3.8
million boys classified as special education in 2000, according to numbers compiled
by the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The gap in
Massachusetts is about as wide, with 54,000 girls and 105,000 boys in 2001.
About 12 percent, or 1 in 8 children, in US public schools was disabled enough to
require special education in 2000, the latest year for which national figures are
available. In Massachusetts, a greater share of children were placed in special
education: 1 in 6, or 17 percent, in 2001.
For more than 25 years, Massachusetts had one of the nation's most generous
special-education laws, requiring districts to provide the ''maximum feasible benefit''
to disabled students. But two years ago, amid soaring costs and worries that some
students received the often expensive services without truly needing them - the state
Legislature enacted stricter eligibility requirements.
The new rules took hold in January, but educators say it is too early to gauge their
effect.
Meanwhile, wide differences from town to town persist. Take Norfolk and Lincoln,
both outside Route 128 and each with about 1,200 students. Both superintendents
say they try to ensure that students don't end up in special education for the wrong
reasons, such as academic problems that aren't driven by disabilities.
But last year, 73 percent of Norfolk's special-education students - compared to 57
percent of Lincoln's - were boys.
''I really wonder why this is true,'' said Norfolk School Superintendent Marcia A.
Lukon, who has testified before the Legislature in favor of tightening special-education
eligibility. ''We have a few severe behavior cases, but in general it's not the naughty
little boys that get put in special ed.''
Jeanne Whitten, interim superintendent of schools in Lincoln, is equally baffled by her
district's smaller gender gap: ''I'm wondering if perhaps we just abide by the rules and
regulations of the Department of Education more so than others. There's no magic
formula, clearly. We try to treat all children, all genders, all ethnic groups the same.''
Boys do exhibit some disorders with higher frequency - four times as many boys are
autistic, specialists say, and three to four times as many boys are diagnosed with
attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Biologically, boys have more birth defects and
mature at slower rates than girls. And in classrooms, boys are more prone to disrupt
lessons if they struggle with learning, while girls turn more inward and simply tune
out the teacher.
''Girls might sit quietly in the regular-ed classroom appearing as if they're getting it,
but not causing behavioral disruptions because it's not part of their repertoire,'' said
Jerome J. Schultz, a clinical neuropsychologist and director of the Learning Lab at
Lesley University in Cambridge. ''Boys frustrated by reading or math or who find
school a toxic place because of a lack of appropriate education might be more likely
to act out physically - and do so in ways that would get the notice of the teacher.''
The gap cannot be explained entirely by the fact that boys develop more slowly
because it persists throughout all ages. In Massachusetts, at age 6, the male-female
ratio is 2.4 to 1, leveling off by age 9 at 1.9 to 1 - but it remains at that level through
high school.
Orleans school officials insist they gauge first whether struggling students would be
better off with extra attention or different teaching styles instead of special education.
Moreover, some disabled students get special-education help but take
regular-education classes. ''Just because students are referred doesn't mean they
qualify,'' said Ann Caretti, director of student services for the Nauset Regional School
District, which includes Orleans.
In the end, the strength of the local parent councils or parents' familiarity with
complex educational law also can affect who gets special-education services.
When she lived in Burlington, Caroline Pooler resisted the district's suggestions that
her second-grade son, who has a speech and language disorder, be transferred from
regular-education classes into special-needs classes. After mediation and a lawyer's
help, Pooler moved to Andover so her son could remain in regular-education classes
while also getting special-education services.
''I do believe sometimes special education is a crutch,'' Pooler said. ''Some kids do
need it. But there are times when kids could be in a regular-ed classrooms with the
right accommodations.''
The Globe calculated disability rates by gender and diagnosis in each of the nation's
14,681 public school districts using information from the 2000 Elementary and
Secondary School Survey by the Office for Civil Rights. For Massachusetts schools,
later figures were available, for 2001 by district and for 2002 statewide, from the
Massachusetts Department of Education. Figures for every school are at
boston.com. |
