Dr. Billy C. Hawkins knows firsthand the dangers of being inaccurately diagnosed with a learning disability. That identification marker, he says, is too often assigned to African-American boys, creating a negative stigma that comes with a tremendous cost.
“I’ve had conversations with parents who don’t know what to do,” says Hawkins, who has been president of Talladega College, a private historically Black college in Alabama, since 2008.
“Too many of our youngsters go through our school system and have these negative labels placed on them as a result of this so-called sophisticated diagnostic testing,” he says. “I was one that had been routed in and out of special education as a kid. And if it had not been for a high school principal who challenged the system and put me back in regular classes, who knows what would have happened to Billy Hawkins?”
After a long career as a public school teacher and nearly four decades in higher education, Hawkins has become an outspoken critic on the issue of misclassifying students as learning disabled, sometimes chiding public school districts for placing large numbers of Black students into special education classes in an attempt to secure additional funding for their beleaguered schools.
“I’ve testified before Congress about learning disabilities and I’ve written two books,” he says. “I had this negative label placed on me and yet I finished undergrad in three and a half years, went on to earn a master’s degree with a 4.0 grade point average and then earned a Ph.D.”
Now, he hopes that his personal testimony will help to inspire a new movement focused on how best to educate young African-Americans, who often may never get a chance to pursue their life’s ambition because they are deemed as learning deficient. “All students can learn with the right support,” says Hawkins.
Rebuilding troubled institutions
