Empirical Research on Ethnic Minority Students: 1995-2009

Ethnic minority disproportionality has been a topic of extensive discussion and research for many years. In 1997, Artiles, Trent, and Kuan conducted a seminal review of the special education research literature to identify how often researchers report and disaggregate data in ways that would support conclusions about specific ethnic minority groups. These authors found alarmingly low rates of publication on identifiable minority groups. The purpose of this review is to replicate the work of Artiles et al. and extend this literature analysis to the subsequent 15–year period (1995–2009). We found increases in the proportion of articles reporting ethnic minority information 15 years following the Artiles et al. publication. Discussion focuses on the gap in our knowledge of evidence–based practices for ethnic minority students in special education.