Replicated Evidence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Disability Identification in U.S. Schools

Abstract

Federal legislation and policy increasingly seek to address minority overrepresentation in special education due to concerns that U.S. schools are misidentifying children as disabled based on their race or ethnicity. Yet whether and to what extent this is occurring is currently in dispute. We estimated racial disparities in disability identification using very large (e.g., Ns = 183,570, 165,540, and 48,560) student-level, nationally representative data sets and multivariate logistic regression including school fixed effects models along with tabulations of percentage with a disability among racial or ethnic groups across academic achievement deciles. Among children who were otherwise similar in their academic achievement, poverty exposure, gender, and English language learner status, racial or ethnic minority children were consistently less likely than White children to be identified as having disabilities. Minority children’s disability underidentification was evident (a) in elementary, middle, and high school; (b) across racially diverse groups and specific disability conditions; and (c) throughout the achievement distribution. Contrary to federal regulatory and policy efforts, minority children have been less likely than otherwise similarly achieving White children to receive special education services in the United States since at least 2003.

Intelligence and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

“…Binet was adamant that his measure should not be used as a sole indicator of a child's intellectual potential and that intelligence can change and develop over the lifespan. His measure was the impetus for the Stanford-Binet, which, along with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, are the most commonly used IQ measures in the United States, where school children with disabilities are one of the most heavily tested populations [33]. The court cases covered in this article highlight the complicated relationship between intelligence and education vis a vis IDEA.…”

“…For example, members of low-performing groups will have a higher likelihood of receiving lower scores, which, in turn, lead to an increased likelihood of ID diagnoses and decreased likelihood of LD diagnoses [31,32]. Morgan and colleagues [33,34] have found that minority children are underrepresented in special education classrooms compared to their White counterparts with similar profiles in academic achievement, income, and language status. Others, however, argue these data and analytical approaches do not adequately capture important factors and interdisciplinary nuances of IDEA and minority children with disabilities [35,36].…”

Special education use in elementary school by children with nonsyndromic orofacial clefts

“…Academic achievement is a strong predictor of disability identification, and children from minority groups are more likely to experience academic difficulties at school entry (Hosp & Reschly, ; National Center for Education Statistics, ). After adjusting for individual levels of academic achievement and school level factors, African American children were 57% less likely to receive special education services compared to White children, and 53% less likely to be identified under specific learning disability compared to White children (Morgan et al, ). In our work, African American children in third grade had statistically significantly lower mean reading scores on the third grade end of grade test compared to White children ( p < .0001), perhaps explaining their increased likelihood of eligibility classification under specific learning disability.…”

Effect of Local Norms on Racial and Ethnic Representation in Gifted Education

“…A representation index is a form of the general relative risk calculation and is the ratio between any given group's representation in the identified gifted population and its representation in the overall student population. This is the approach most frequently used in education research, including studies of disproportionality in other areas of education, such as special education services (e.g., Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2017) and school discipline (e.g., Gregory, Cornell, & Fan, 2011). For example, Peters et al (2019) found that African American and Latinx students were represented in identified gifted populations at approximately 57% and 70% of these students' prevalence in the overall K-12 student population.…”