Who is Identified as Emotionally/Behaviorally Disordered? (continued)

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Cultural differences may have an impact on the identification of learners with emotional/behavioral disorders, working against some children in opposite ways. On the one hand, many professionals are unaware of the impact of culture on behavior and may mistake cultural differences for emotional/behavioral disorders. On the other hand, learners from diverse cultural, ethnic, or linguistic groups may not be identified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered when they are in need of services. McIntyre (1993) found that learners may risk being denied special education support as emotionally/behaviorally disordered if they are members of an historically oppressed minority (African American, Hispanic American) or from low income households. Under the original federal definition (discussed later in this chapter) groups were mislabeled due to cultural differences and home circumstances; under the current definitions culturally diverse students will be provided extra safeguards against incorrect identification (McIntyre, 1993).

African American learners are also overrepresented among learners identified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered. This continues to be a concern for special education. The overrepresentation of African Americans as emotionally/behaviorally disordered has been found to occur when there was also overrepresentation of African Americans as learning disabled and underrepresentation of African Americans as "gifted" (Sewartka, Deering, & Grant, 1995).

The rate of identification of learners as emotionally/behaviorally disordered varies across racial, cultural, gender, and socioeconomic lines. African American and Caucasian students are overrepresented: they represent 16% and 68% of school age enrollment respectively, and 22% and 71% of the students classified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered. On the other hand, Hispanic American and Asian American students represent 12% and 3% of the school-age population respectively, but only 6% and 1% of the students classified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered (U.S. Department of Education, OCR 1993)

Finally, students identified as emotionally/behaviorally disordered have significant involvement with the juvenile justice system. Twenty percent are arrested at least once before they leave school and 35% are arrested within a few years of leaving school (Wagner et al., 1991).