This week was interesting because the article I initially found led me down a rabbit trail to another article that offered a wealth of information for my research. I felt like I truly understood the research process this week. The first article addresses a study that found that 347 school districts were flagged for having overidentification of minorities in special education. These districts are now required to dedicate 15 percent of their federal special education budget to address the problem. Though this study only spanned 25 states, over 100 of these districts were all located in Louisiana. The article helped me develop further research into what steps these districts will take to remedy the problem, how the issue developed and is leading me to question why one southern state has such a large number of these issues. I decided to continue to research  and searched for “testing strategies” AND “special education” AND “diagnosis” and the first article I found was a goldmine of information on the impracticality of standardized tests in special education, analysis of the Response to Intervention (RTI) process, and different assessments that may offer more information on the student to better diagnose disability.

I was so excited to find this resource and to learn more about diagnosis and assessment of students.