GRANT WILL ALLOW U.VA.'S CURRY SCHOOL TO LEAD
SPECIAL EDUCATION RESEARCH BY, FOR AND ABOUT MINORITIES 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 9 -- With funding from a major
new grant, the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education
will launch a Center of Minority Researchers who will examine how
cultural differences can influence the education of ethnic and
racial minorities. 
	A $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education
will allow the Curry School to establish a core of minority
researchers who will investigate a full spectrum of issues related
to educating students with disabilities.  To be established Jan. 1,
the center will recruit and train minority scholars who can serve as
mentors to others. 
	The three-year grant, one of the largest the Curry School
has received, will allow the center to fund 18 emerging minority
researchers nationwide. In addition, it will allow the Curry School
to recruit four new minority students who will pursue doctoral study
in special education while providing support and networking
opportunities for the researchers nationwide.
	"A distinctive feature of the project is that it will be a
center of minority researchers, not a center for minority research,"
said Daniel P. Hallahan, the Virgil S. Ward Professor of Education,
who is one of three co-principal investigators.  The others are
professor of education James M. Kauffman and Donna Ford-Harris, an
associate professor of education. 
	"The center will develop a core of minority researchers who
have the capacity to be self sustaining, enter the mainstream of
academic research and mentor others in the field," Hallahan said. 
	The center will foster research on issues related to
Hispanic and Native-American concerns as well as inner-city and
urban schools with predominantly minority, high-poverty enrollments.
Aiding the center in its efforts to generate research on Hispanic
and Native-American issues will be the University of Colorado's
Bueno Center, directed by Leonard Baca. Center researchers will also
work closely with programs in other states, such as Alliance 2000
and Project SUCCESS at the University of New Mexico, that have
helped Native-American and Hispanic faculty obtain and implement
teacher-education grants.
	Ford-Harris will launch this spring a year-long seminar on
special education and minority students. "Our goal will be to talk
about sensitive issues pertaining to color that may not otherwise
get discussed. It is important that as minority researchers, we
don't perpetuate the stereotypes and labelling that currently exist
in special education," she said. 
	Bearing such labels as emotionally disturbed, learning
disabled, behaviorally disordered or having attention-deficit
disorders, minority students are over-represented in special
education programs nationwide, Ford-Harris said. To illustrate an
example of over-representation, she cited data from a 1990
elementary and secondary school civil rights survey, which showed
that although black students represented 16 percent of the school
population nationwide, 34 percent of students identified as mentally
retarded were black and 22 percent of students identified as
emotionally disturbed were black.
	"Few researchers are investigating how and why minority
students are over-represented in special education programs. The
grant will encourage minority researchers to examine factors most
likely contributing to that over-representation, such as teachers'
expectations and teachers' lack of appropriate training about
cultural diversity, including learning and cognitive styles,
communication styles and behavioral styles," Ford-Harris said.
	Another component of the center will be working on the
infrastructure of historically black colleges and universities to
support research and technology. Although there are more than 100
historically black colleges and universities in the United States,
only about 40 offer special education programs, Kauffman noted. "We
will encourage educators at such institutions to design and
coordinate their own seminars during the project," he said.
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October 8, 1996
	FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact Daniel Hallahan at (804)
924-0756, James Kauffman at (804) 924-0763 or Donna Ford-Harris at
(804) 924-0843.  Television reporters should call our TV News Office
at (804) 924-7550.