Abstract
In this chapter, the authors deconstruct the deficit views inherent in special education assessment wherein marginalized, neurodivergent students receive stigmatizing labels and are often deprived of opportunities for quality instruction. The authors examine how eligibility criteria based on deficit views of disability are culturally biased and scientifically invalid. Then, the deficit perspective of Individualized Education Programs are analyzed to demonstrate how neurodivergent students and their families are isolated and objectified through this legal process. Lastly, as an alternative to the current assessment system, universally designed assessment is recommended to provide more accessible and flexible platforms for demonstrating students' knowledge and skills and to restore the lost connection between assessments and daily instruction.
TopIntroduction
It is well acknowledged that the purpose of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2004) is to provide equal and free education for all students. However, the basic assumptions inherent in IDEA and the special education system are based on deficit views (Braunsteiner & Mariano-Lapidus, 2014; Cosier & Ashby, 2016; Sandoval Gomez & Mckee, 2020). From this deficit perspective, the lack of a certain attribute does not necessarily mean the absence of the attribute in a descriptive sense. Instead, the lack of an attribute is normatively interpreted as a deficit or a deviation from the norm (Dinishak, 2016). For example, in descriptive claims such as “a student lacks verbal speech,” “lack” means simple absence of verbal speech. However, within deficit views, this descriptive claim easily slips into a normative claim, such as “a student suffers a deficit of verbal speech, and the student ought to have verbal speech,” without justification of why the student ought to have verbal speech. In alignment with a medical model of disabilities, deficit views attribute abnormalities to an individual and claim that these abnormalities should be fixed by special interventions. In current deficit-based school systems, students who are deviant from the norm — set by standardized assessments — are regarded as abnormal and identified as disabled through an evaluation process. The special education system assumes that the disabilities or abnormalities are caused by inherent defects within the students, and the abnormal behaviors or lower academic performance of these students with disabilities should be remediated by different curricula, in separate settings, with specially trained educators (Dudley-Marling & Burns, 2014).
Such deficit views are deeply ingrained in assessment practice, too. From disability identification to progress evaluation, current assessment practice focuses only on identifying students’ deficits and overlooks their strengths and potentials. Deficit views are so deeply entrenched in the assessment process, school educators unconsciously assume that they offer valid explanations of students’ performance by pointing to a lack or an absence of certain attributes (Dinishak, 2016). Moreover, assessment results are used for labelling students as abnormal and removing them from general education classrooms, without providing suggestions for what students and schools can do for better learning. While assessments are used to maintain the special education system, the fundamental purpose of assessments — improving students’ learning — has been forgotten, and assessments are more and more disconnected from daily instruction. Meanwhile, educators and scholars have overlooked the need to develop more culturally respectful and flexible assessments to discover students’ hidden strengths and knowledge and align them with daily instruction.
Students with neurological disabilities have been unfairly discriminated against by the current special education assessment practice. As scientists and researchers still do not fully understand the genetic factors associated with neurological disabilities such as autism, learning disabilities, or emotional disturbance, schools use operationalized criteria based on students’ behavior. As these diagnostic criteria are laden with deficit views, schools tend to pathologize these students and educate them in separate, self-contained classrooms (Armstrong, 2012; Chapman, 2020). However, more and more scholars and neurodiversity supporters are challenging these deficit-based diagnostic criteria by asserting that different neurological development should be regarded as natural human variation (Armstrong, 2012; Chapman, 2020; Hacking, 2009; Nicholaidis, 2012). These scholars use the social model of disability to explain that the suffering of these students are products of social marginalization and exclusion and often use the term “neurodivergent” (in contrast to “neurotypical”) to refer to students with neurological disabilities. Other scholars also point out that there are no appropriate assessment tools for measuring the knowledge and skills of neurodivergent students who have different cultural linguistic backgrounds, limited expressive language skills, and different sensory and cognitive processes (Kasari et al, 2013; Ketterlin-Geller, 2008; Laurelut, 2016).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Five Characteristics of Emotional Disturbance: A disturbed child exhibited one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree: an inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers; inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances; general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or a tendency to develop physical symptoms, pains, or fears associated with personal or school problems (Eli Bower, 1960; 1982).
IDEA: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
EAHC: Education for All Handicapped Children Act.
SLD: Specific learning disability.
Neurodiversity: A notion that all neurological differences, including those labeled as cognitive disabilities, are important and necessary parts of human diversity.
OHI: Other health impairment.
RTI: Response to intervention.
ED: Emotional disturbance.
PDD-NOS: Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.
FAPE: Free appropriate public education.
Medical Model: A notion that disability is the result of a mental and/or a physical condition(s), which is intrinsic to the individual and which may reduce the individual’s quality of life and cause clear disadvantage to the individual.
DSM: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.
Intellectual Disability: Significantly sub-average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently (at the same time) with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
NCLB: No child left behind.
Specific Learning Disability: A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities; of intellectual disability; of emotional disturbance; or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.
CDA: Critical discourse analysis.
DIF: Differential item functioning.
Other Health Impairment: Having limited strength, vitality, or alertness, including a heightened alertness to environmental stimuli, that results in limited alertness with respect to the educational environment, that is due to chronic or acute health problems such as asthma, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, hemophilia, lead poisoning, leukemia, nephritis, rheumatic fever, sickle cell anemia, and Tourette syndrome.
Neurodivergent: Differing in neurological development from what is considered to be typical or normal.
ADHD: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
IEP: Individualized education program.
Autism: A developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance. Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences.
IHP: Individualized habilitation plan.
ESSA: Every Student Success Act.
DLM: Dynamic learning map.
UDA: Universally designed assessment.
Emotional Disturbance: A condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree that adversely affects a child’s educational performance: an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors, an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers, inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances, a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression, a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.
Universally Designed Assessment: A type of assessment which is designed to provide a customized and flexible testing platform to fit the individual’s needs with least external accommodations.
ESEA: Elementary and Secondary Education Act.