Avoiding Bias in Special Education

Avoiding Bias in Special Education Classroom Assessments

The principal way of avoiding biases in the administration of assessments is for the special education teacher to develop a comprehensive awareness of the nature of different types of disabilities and their relationship to cognitive capacity and disability. Special education students possess varying degrees of cognitive, social, and developmental abilities and struggle with a wide range of disabilities in those different realms (FDDS, 2002). Consequently, it is crucial for the needs assessment process to be accurate for the benefit of special education students as well as for the benefit of their classmates. In that regard, avoiding bias requires a fundamental appreciation on the part of the educator of the specific nature of different elements of learning (and other types of) disabilities.

The principal difficulty in conducting accurate assessments is the degree to which cognitive, learning, behavioral, developmental, and social impairments can co-exist or exist in relative isolation from one another (Polloway, Patton, Smith, et al., 1997). Moreover, where apparent disabilities unrelated to learning capacity are misunderstood by educators responsible for conducting educational assessments, the result is deprivation of the opportunity of special-needs students to obtain the most appropriate educational opportunities. Conversely, where special-needs students are included in classrooms based exclusively on their high learning capacity despite non-learning-related disabilities that should preclude them from inclusion in standard educational programming, there are detrimental consequences for special-needs students as well as their classmates (SEDL, 2010).