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In DeKalb, virtually all ‘psychoeducational’ students are black

April 1, 2016 Kennesaw - David, 7, flicks his fingers repeatedly as he plays in his room on Friday, April 1, 2016. The Cobb County school system tried to place him in a "psychoeducational" school because educators decided he had a behavior disorder. Across Georgia, 37 percent of all students are African-American. Yet in the state's unique network of special schools for children with behavioral problems, 56 percent of students are black. Most are boys. And most have the vaguest possible psychological diagnosis to justify their placement in what federal authorities describe as an illegally segregated school system. HYOSUB SHIN / HSHIN@AJC.COM

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Credit: Hyosub Shin

April 1, 2016 Kennesaw - David, 7, flicks his fingers repeatedly as he plays in his room on Friday, April 1, 2016. The Cobb County school system tried to place him in a "psychoeducational" school because educators decided he had a behavior disorder. Across Georgia, 37 percent of all students are African-American. Yet in the state's unique network of special schools for children with behavioral problems, 56 percent of students are black. Most are boys. And most have the vaguest possible psychological diagnosis to justify their placement in what federal authorities describe as an illegally segregated school system. HYOSUB SHIN / HSHIN@AJC.COM
By Alan Judd
April 29, 2016

Virtually all DeKalb County students assigned to a psychoeducational program for behavioral disorders are black, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

Black children make up 94 percent of DeKalb's students in the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS. But African Americans account for just 69 percent of DeKalb's enrollment, a gap of 26 percentage points. Click here to see a breakdown, by school, of the DeKalb students enrolled in GNETS.

Statewide, schools disproportionately place black students in GNETS programs, segregating them not only by disability but also by race, the Journal-Constitution found.

Read the AJC's complete investigation here.

About the Author

Alan Judd is a former investigative reporter for the AJC. He has written about persistently dangerous apartment complexes in metro Atlanta, juvenile justice, child welfare, sexual abuse by physicians, patient deaths in state psychiatric hospitals, and other topics.

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