VALUE AND ADDRESS DIVERSITY

There has been increasing concern about the academic failure and the s chool dropout rate of U.S. children and adolescents, particularly thos e with serious emotional disturbance (SED). Although the rates of iden tification, placement, and achievement of children and adolescents wit h SED are strongly correlated with gender, race, and other cultural di mensions, these are typically not addressed in our educational system. The growing diversity in students has increased the potential for mis identification and provision of inappropriate educational and related services to these children and adolescents. Target 3 of the National A genda For Achieving Better Results for Children and Youth with Serious Emotional Disturbance deals with issues involved in providing cultura lly competent and linguistically appropriate services to students with SED. Within the context of this target, we define the concepts of div ersity, culture, cultural competence, and cultural sensitivity before discussing historical and current approaches to multicultural educatio n. The limitations of current approaches indicate the need for a new p aradigm of multicultural education. A holistic model of multicultural education is sketched, and the applications, examples of best practice s, and implications of this model for the education of diverse learner s are presented.