race, education, and disability post reading

I have found the material about learning disabilities, emotional disturbance and mental retardation really interesting. Going over how schools, in particular teachers have the power to determine if a student has a learning disability. Also I am glad to be aware of how we tend to think of disablitly as a physical set back and not as a problem “within” a person. After reviewing how standardized tests are what help determin if a studen has a learning disabiliy or not, I am upset about the fact that some students have special needs that arent met, whch can lead to a misdiagnosis. For example we can take a student whos first language could be something other english and has difficulties understanding questions on the standardized test, leading to them aswering questions wrong. Just like when we had the guest speaker talking about domestic violence in class, when she handed out those slips with questions on them in defferent languages, most of us couldnt answer them. If we were to apply that concept to these student and put ourselves in their shoes, most of us would have been labeld as learning disabled. Another point that I thought was interesting was the point of learning at the “normal” level. Since we are in college and enrolled in non-special education classes we can be considered a normal learning student. A great point is who is to say that we are the norm. I would like to challenge that in comparison to other people we can be considered “slower.” Lets take student who really excell in school and go to colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NYU and are considered “genius',” what if we were to consider those incredibly smart students as the norm because of their test scores, we who may have scored lower and werent able to get into said colleges may be thought of as learning disabled. To make my point, this ideology of what the normal learning rate is, can be skewed in either direction, placing some people in a lower rank or higher rank dependning on where that normal area falls. To incorperate how race, class and gender play into this roll, we can take into account that most diagnosis are determined by white female teachers in grades k-12, who are typically in a middle class rank and believe that their point of view of what normal is applies to everyone. Factors arent considered when you take a lower class asian student who's first language was chinese for example, and can understand whats going on in class, but may have difficulty writing and reading. I feel as though those two subjects are what can hold a student of color back from achieveing what is considered the normal learning process. Unlike math, which is a universal language, writing and reading in a different language than what you are used to, can weigh heavily on how you respond to questions. If a teacher cannot realize that student of color may need more help on these subjects in order to advance in their studies, they may be placed in a special education program which can be difficult to get out of, therefore not allowing the chance to prove thie capability of learning at the same rate as “normal” students.