Special Education Disproportionality: A Review of Response to Intervention and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Abstract

Special education disproportionality for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students persists as a controversial and intractable problem in our educational systems. Response to intervention (RtI) and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), both independently and collectively are considered to offer promise for mitigating conditions of overrepresentation in special education programs. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing research to examine the effects of RtI on minority students and the combined effects of RtI and CRP on minority students. The reviews of these works are discussed to assess whether the Morgan et al. (2015) recommendation for the U.S. Department of Education to recall its efforts to reduce minority disproportionality is justified.