Amazon.com description: Product Description: Special education is a vibrant, complex, and controversial field that continues to garner widespread attention from policy makers, researchers, practitioners, and educators. It is a field whose primary goal is to provide an appropriate education for students with special needs, a disproportionate number of whom are from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. In this book the authors bring together critical perspectives and historical viewpoints on special education by a group of distinguished and well-recognized African American scholars, educators, and related professionals. These authors raise important questions, challenge assumptions about traditions and conventions in special education, and provide insights into how to reach and teach under-served African American children and youth in special education.