Is AIDS a biasing factor in teacher judgment?

Is AIDS a biasing factor in teacher judgment? ABSTRACT: This study, examined the effect that knowledge of astudent having AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)A viral disease of humans caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which attacks and compromises the body's immune system. ) would have onregular-education teacher judgment regarding special educationplacement. Regular-education, third-grade, teachers in Indiana were sentone of two psychological reports. The reports were identical except thatone report stated that the student had AIDS and the other stated thatthe student had rheumatic fever rheumatic fever(rmăt`ĭk), systemic inflammatory disease, extremely variable in its manifestation, severity, duration, and aftereffects. . AIDS was not found to be a biasingfactor in teachers' judgments regarding special education services. Previous research has found several factors to bias teacherjudgment. This research suggests that teachers may be unaware of biasesthey have about their students. Teacher bias has been shown to effectstudent performance and teacher expectations. In addition, decisions asto which students are placed in special education classes are affectedby these biases. Socioeconomic status has been shown to be a biasing factor inteachers' decisions regarding special education placement. Childrenfrom higher socioeconomic status were rated more favorably to succeedthan were children from lower socioeconomic families. The lower statusstudents were recommended for special education classes more frequentlythan were higher socioeconomic students with identical psychologicalprofiles (Bergen & Smith, 1966; Kehle, 1973). Salvia salvia:see sage. salviaAny of about 700 species of herbaceous and woody plants that make up the genus Salvia, in the mint family. Some members (e.g., sage) are important as sources of flavouring. , Clark, and Ysseldyke (1973) and Foster (1976) examined theeffect of labeling on teachers' stereotypes and expectations ofstudents. These authors found that teachers held negative expectationstoward children who were labeled with a deviancy label, even though thestudent exhibited normal behavior. The labels themselves were found tobe the biasing factor in the way the teachers viewed the behavior ofthese children. Those teachers who thought they were viewing a gifted,retarded, or normal child tended to rate the behavior of that childaccording to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the label assigned to him or her rather than the behaviorthat was being exhibited. Recently there has been considerable attention in the pressregarding educating children with Acquired immune Deficiency Syndrome(AIDS) (Liss, 1987; Price, 1987; Reed, 1986). Three cases have attractednational attention: Ryan White Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990[1]) was a young man with AIDS from Kokomo, Indiana who became a national spokesman for AIDS, after being expelled from school because of his infection. of indiana and Ryan Thomas Ryan Thomas (born June 10, 1984 in Manchester) is an English actor who is currently starring as Jason Grimshaw on ITV's Coronation Street.He has a younger brother, Adam Thomas, who is currently starring as Donte Charles in BBC One drama series, Waterloo Road. and ChannonPhipps of California. These children have contracted the AIDS antibodiesthrough blood transfusions and have been denied readmission to school(Liss, 1987). Legal and ethical issues ensued. As a precedent, federaland appellate courts stated that the New York City New York City:see New York, city. New York CityCity (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. Board of Educationcould not exclude carriers of the Hepatitis B Hepatitis BDefinitionHepatitis B is a potentially serious form of liver inflammation due to infection by the hepatitis B virus (HBV). It occurs in both rapidly developing (acute) and long-lasting (chronic) forms, and is one of the most common chronic virus, an infectionsimilar to AIDS in mode of transmission (Black, 1986). The court'sdecision was based on a student's right to a least restrictiveenvironment As part of the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the least restrictive environment is identified as one of the six principles that govern the education of students with disabilities. , as stated in Public Law 94-142. Due to this case andothers, school systems are now preparing for the possibility thatchildren with AIDS may be attending their schools. Parents of healthy children are becoming increasingly concernedthat their children will be exposed to a child who has AIDS and mightthen contract the disease. Parents mistakenly believe that their childmay get AIDS by sharing the same toys, touching the AIDS child, ordrinking from the same glass (Liss, 1987). These beliefs have persisteddespite research to the contrary. The Center for Disease Control (CDC See Control Data, century date change and Back Orifice. CDC - Control Data Corporation ) has issued guidelines forschool systems when enrolling children with AIDS. Simply put, the CDChas recommended that children with AIDS remain in regular educationclasses until they develop neurological deficits or excretory ex��cre��to��ryadj.Of, relating to, or used in excretion.excretorypertaining to excretion.excretory behaviorsee elimination behavior. problems.At present, no cases have been presented to the courts to establishprovisions for when the student with AIDS should be removed to specialeducation. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects thatattaching a communicable-disease label, such as AIDS, has onteachers' willingness to recommend special-class or regular-classplacement for students. SUBJECT SELECTION A random sample of 130third-grade teachers was selected from teachers listed on the March 1986Indiana State School Superintendents Staffing Reports. Teachers wererandomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (65 teachers ineach group) according to whether the teacher was mailed a psychologicalreport containing medical information indicating that a hypotheticalmale student had AIDS or that the student had rheumatic fever. Teacherswere assigned an identification number stamped on the response forms toprotect their anonymity. The teachers returned the response forms to anunidentified post office box. The researchers received 91 response formsback from the teachers, for a response rate of 70%. The response rateindicated that the sample was representative. This sample size also metthe minimal sample size needed for the proposed statistical analyses(Stevens, 1986). MATERIALS The 130 teachers in the study were sent thefollowing materials: (a) an explanatory cover letter, (b) apsychological report containing medical information, and (c) a responsesheet. The cover letter explained that the purpose of the study was"to determine the nature of teacher judgments regarding educationalplacement and related academic and sociometric factors" and thatthe study hoped to gain a "better understanding of how teachersviewed information contained in psychological reports. " Teacherswere asked to read the psychological report attached to the cover letterand respond to the items on the response sheet. Each teacher in the study was sent a fictitious psychologicalreport describing a third-grade child. Two separate forms of thepsychological report were used. The two forms were similar in that eachform presented evidence of below-average academic functioningfirst-grade school achievement on the Wide Range AchievementTest-Revised), low intellectual functioning (Wechsler Intelligence Scalefor ChildrenRevised Full Scale IQ, 73-5-Performance IQ, 74 +- 3 andVerbal IQ of 72 +- 4; and a Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised IQ,75 +- 8; both IQs were reported in the form of a 68% confidenceinterval confidence interval,n a statistical device used to determine the range within which an acceptable datum would fall. Confidence intervals are usually expressed in percentages, typically 95% or 99%. ). The reports also indicated that the child had immature visualmotor development (Bender Visual-Motor Gestalt Gestalt(gəshtält`)[Ger.,=form], school of psychology that interprets phenomena as organized wholes rather than as aggregates of distinct parts, maintaining that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Test), developmental ageof 7.3 years, with no evidence of significant behavior problems. The two psychological report forms differed only in medicalinformation. The medical-information section of the psychologicalreports indicated either that the student had rheumatic fever as a4-year-old, or had been diagnosed as having AIDS. The response sheets sent to the teachers consisted of fivestatements. The first four statements required teachers to respond on a10-point Likert-type scale with I indicating no agreement to 10indicating complete agreement with the statement. The fifth statementasked teachers to estimate the percentage (0-100% on a 10-point scale)of the school day that the child should be mainstreamed. The followingstatements constituted the 5-item response sheet: 1. Future academicdifficulty can be expected for this child. 2. This child will experience future difficulties in peer relationships. 3. Further psychological evaluation of thischild would probably reveal a lower level of functioning than was indicated in the report. 4. Placement in a specialeducation class would be appropriate for this child. 5. The percentage of this child'sschool day that could probably be successfully integrated into regular fourth-grade classes next September is: The five ratingscales were counterbalanced (i.e., 1 to 10, 10 to 1, etc.) and thestatement order randomly blocked to make three forms of the responsesheet. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Means, standard deviations (SDs), and thenumber of teachers in each of the respondent groups for each of the fourdependent variables are presented in Table 1. A one-way multivariateanalysis of variance was used to analyze the data from the 91respondents. The Omnibus multivariate F for the vector of dependentvariables was found to be nonsignificant non��sig��nif��i��cant?adj.1. Not significant.2. Having, producing, or being a value obtained from a statistical test that lies within the limits for being of random occurrence. , F = 72(5, 85), p > .05.Because the omnibus multivariate p was nonsignificant further analysiswas not conducted. The results of the multivariate analysis of varianceand univariate F values are reported in Tables 2 and 3 respectively. The results of this study indicated that those teachersparticipating in the study were not biased toward students with AIDS.AIDS was not found to be a biasing factor in teachers' attitudesregarding special education placement, expectations regarding academicfunctioning, and peer relationships. This finding was very unexpected.The generalization of the findings of this study to teachers in otherstates may be limited. The observed attitudes of the sample teachers maybe a result of the public awareness and public scrutiny, related to theRyan White case, that Indiana educators had received at the time of thisstudy. However, this study may indicate that public school regulareducation teachers are sensitive to the needs and rights of studentswith AIDS. These results may also indicate that regular educationteachers may have a more enlightened attitude about AIDS than has thegeneral public.