Unpacking the Placement of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in Special Education Programs and Services in the Early Grades: School Readiness as a Predictive Variable

Abstract

In this article, Jacob Hibel, Susan Faircloth, and George Farkas investigate the persistent finding that American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students are overrepresented in special education. Using data from the kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the authors compare the third-grade special education placement rate of AI/AN students to that of other racial/ethnic groups. They find that approximately 15 percent of AI/AN third-graders received special education services, a rate far higher than that of the other racial and ethnic groups. However,using multilevel regression analysis to control for a number of confounding factors,including socioeconomic status and test scores at school entry, they find no statistically significant difference between the special education placement rates of AI/AN and non-Hispanic white students. Controlling for a range of school characteristics,they also find that schools with a higher proportion of AI/AN students place these students in special education at rates similar to those of other schools in the United States. The authors conclude that the strongest predictor of special education placement is a student's academic readiness on entering kindergarten as measured by the student's pre-reading and pre-mathematics scores. They discuss the implications of these findings for future research and practice in the education of AI/AN students.

Factor Structure of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Fourth Edition Among Referred Native American Students

“…Unlike the Asian American population, Native American students are overrepresented in special education nationally (Dauphinais & King, 1992;Hibel, Faircloth, & Farkas, 2008;Marks, Lemley, & Wood, 2010). This group also suffers from environmental deprivation (Vraniak, 1994), high rates of suicide (CDC, 2007), and high rates of school dropout (Sparks, 2000).…”

“…Thus far, such efforts to understand the respective roles that social, cultural, and linguistic factors have on the normative development of Native American children have identified English language skills (Beiser & Gotowiec, 2000;Dauphinais & King, 1992;Tsethlikai, 2011), cultural practices (Dauphinais & King, 1992;Tsethlikai, 2011), and school readiness (Hibel et al, 2008) as factors contributing to the educational experiences of Native American children.…”

Transition Into and Out of Special Education Services by Young Australian School Children Between 2006 and 2010

“…However, (Hibel, Faircloth, and Farkas (2008) found that, after controlling for socioeconomic status and characteristics of the school, there were no significant differences in the special education placement rates of American Indian and Alaska Native students with that of non-Hispanic White students. The strongest predictor in this study that used a large US database was students' reading and numeracy skills on entry to school.…”

Use of Large‐Scale Data Sets to Study Educational Pathways of American Indian and Alaska Native Students

“…Although AI/AN students were not oversampled in these data sets, they are included in sufficient numbers to allow for statistical analysis. For example, using data from the ECLS-K (1998-1999), Hibel, Faircloth, and Farkas (2008) found that AI/AN students' referral and placement into special education could be predicted in kindergarten, based in large part on these children' s scores on standardized achievement tests in reading and math. This analysis indicated that those students who performed poorly on the selected achievement tests were more likely to receive special education services in the early grades.…”