Reading Summary: Diversity

SPED 3100

January 21, 2015

Ashley Kania

Diverse students deserve an educational program that builds on their cultures, hold high
expectations, and addresses their unique learning styles and needs. (Smith, 2006, p. 70). This
should be the expectation set for diverse students, not only the expectation, but a plan that is set
in motion for these students. However that does not seem to be the case for several diverse
students as they tend to end up entering the special education program because they were
incorrectly identified as having a disability or their disability was not identified to its fullest due
to the diversity difference. This chapter identifies that there is a problem with the placement of
students for several factors that all lead back to the diversity of the student, yet the chapter offers
a solution to this disorder by describing different types of programs these diverse students should
be given access to as an alternative that may benefit the child more. These programs even include
those students who do not require special education services, just language and culture
accommodations. These programs the chapter mentions include multicultural education, where
the education program supports and extends concepts from the students cultural backgrounds;
bilingual education, developed a competence in English as well as their native language; and
then there is an unique combination to these for those who require special education that includes
multicultural-, bilingual-, and special education.
Diverse students are overrepresented in special education. The key factors that can
contribute to this overrepresentation include poor schools, inconsistent educational programs
(possibly due to moving around), the bias and negative attitudes and the nonresponsiveness of
educators to differences of language and culture. These key factors contribute to the fact that
when a child is inaccurately identified as having disabilities the outcomes for the student is not
always positive. These diverse students can be negatively affected in special education, even
though the curriculum is individualized to the student, because many teachers tend to lower

Reading Summary: Diversity

SPED 3100

January 21, 2015

Ashley Kania

their expectations and slow their pace of instruction down for these students. This may be
preventing the child from reaching higher goals that they not only have the potential, but also are
perfectly capable to. However, because their native language is different from English and they
arent fluent in English, or even know the fundamentals of English yet.
Families are an important part to any childs education. Whether the student is in special
education or in general education, diverse or not, it is essential that the families feel welcome and
there is an atmosphere of trust within the school. When dealing with students from diverse
families it is not uncommon to find that some families feel alienated, burdened with the
accusations of not wanting to be involved in their childs education, a system they may not
understand, or just left feeling lacking the information they want/need about their child. It is
important to set up effective means of communication with the parents/guardians of the student
to encourage families to communicate with the school about their child and any information or
policies they may need to clarify. The main and most important thing about families especially
when working with diverse and special education students is that the students parent and family
knows their child the best. Everyone can agree that you all want what is best for this student, but
this chapter makes it key to know that parents and families know everything about the child and
see them as human, not a collection of special needs so it is important to keep them involved in
everything concerning their child.
There is a muddy point in this chapter that I just cannot fully understand, that is the two
concepts that are built on one another- cultural pluralism and the melting pot model. It is
understandable how the melting pot model never worked because it would be ridiculous for
everyone in America to give up their home culture so that they could assimilate for one American
culture. This in itself does not make sense because even if it were to be the American culture,

Reading Summary: Diversity

SPED 3100

January 21, 2015

Ashley Kania

Americans do not have just one culture. Not even two American people have the same culture so
how can we expect that everyone drop their culture and conform to the American culture when it
is made up of so many different cultures and not just one. As for the cultural pluralism, when
there is a 60 to 80 percent of special education students with mental retardation (p.76) that
were culturally and linguistically diverse it should speak volumes that maybe theres something
else going on here. I could be wrong and that could be an absolute true number, but the idea of
cultural pluralism with combining various cultures into one society does not seem realistic in
terms of special education, IQ and other evaluation methods. I believe this high percentage could
be greatly reduced if these evaluation methods were also as diverse as the people in the society.

Reading Summary: Diversity

SPED 3100

January 21, 2015

Ashley Kania

Works Cited
Smith, D. (2006). Multicultural and Bilingual Special Education. In Introduction to special education:
Teaching in an age of opportunity (5th ed., IDEA 2004 update ed., pp. 66-105). Boston:
Pearson/A and B.