The audience that I will be addressing in my website will be Educational professionals, along with parents and families in minority communities. The focus of this website is to address the needs of minority students within special education, and identify specific cultural aspects that may be negatively influencing their placement within these programs.
With focusing on minorities in special education, I am assuming my audience to have basic information regarding special education yet limited experience or knowledge of minority disproportionality within special education.
My audience will have a interest in my topic and possibly a personal attachment to the information. Overall I assume my audience will be receptive of the information and argument made within my website, however, some of the information may be against the “normal” perspective of professional educators or those who work within special education. My goal is not to bash or breakdown the special education sector of schools, but to challenge the thinking and current practices within the assessment and placement of minorities into special education.
The gist of the conversation from my sources has been that there is a noticeable challenge in placing and assessing minorities into special educational programs, but they fall back as unchanged do to an “overly diverse” demographic that can't be easily approached.The main controversy that arises from disproportionality in special education comes from the ideal that public schools are a foundation of “Americanizing” students from an early age and thus current assessment and placement standards for special education in schools is properly used for “American” children. This however leaves out that fact that many children who are overrepresented in special education programs come from different cultural backgrounds and do not have an “Americanized” home life. These factors along with challenges of prejudices in examiner assessments of test scores is also causing a great debate on which aspects of special education assessments are faulty and which aspects are not.
Given that vast accessibility of websites and digital media, I will gain my credibility from drawing upon the already established credibility of my sources. I will use this credibility to strengthen my argument and back up the points in which I analyze. There is truly little I can do to make my audience listen to my perspective. I will work hard to creativity draw their attention to my site, by addressing this topic in a new fashion and by using a family oriented approach. Many sites speak to professionals in Special Education, yet never seem to directly address the families who are effected.
In response to my sources I will speak mostly to parents who are involved in Special Education. Using my sources professional background and expertise I will build my argument and give it credibility. My contribution to the study and discussion on minority disproportionality is that of educating and informing minority parents and families about different aspects and situations that effect their children's placement into special education programs. Many aspects of a child's family life, cultural and ethnical backgrounds can cause them to be placed into programs that are not correctly designed from their needs. The inappropriate placement of minorities into special education programs has been linked to underachievement and lack of motivation later on in the students educational years. My goal is to help parents of children who are being considered for special education programs become better educated and aware of environmental factors that can hinder their child's educational future.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Website Proposal
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Joshua: Good work! Some notes:
ReplyDelete1. “The audience that I will be addressing in my website will be Educational professionals, along with parents and families in minority communities.”—I had some trouble here, because I’m not sure what’s in common with these audiences, or in what ways your thinking about their differences. Is it possible that your website will pull in two different directions?
3. “some of the information may be against the “normal” perspective of professional educators or those who work within special education.”—This sort of challenge can actually make for a much stronger paper. Nice!
4. “The main controversy that arises from disproportionality in special education comes from the ideal that public schools are a foundation of “Americanizing” students from an early age and thus current assessment and placement standards for special education in schools is properly used for “American” children. This however leaves out that fact that many children who are overrepresented in special education programs come from different cultural backgrounds and do not have an “Americanized” home life.”—You cut to the heart of it. Should schools—can schools—Americanize students? And what does it mean for students to undergo this process of Americanization, considering that our politicians spend so much time talking about the value of diversity? (More globally, what does it mean to be Americanized anyway?) Though these sound like leading questions, I really don’t have any definite (and personal) answers for them.
6. “My goal is to help parents of children who are being considered for special education programs become better educated and aware of environmental factors that can hinder their child's educational future.”—This is key. One thought, which I’ve seen in the literature, to consider: Parents of special education students are often marginalized themselves. They tend to avoid speaking back to their childrens’ schools, out of fear (warranted or unwarranted) of the authority these institutions represent.