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Disproportionality is defined as “the presence of students from a specific group in an educational program being higher or lower than one would expect based on their representation in the general population of students.”

Quick facts on what disproportionality is, disproportionality in Special Education, disproportionality in school discipline, and culturally responsive solutions.

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5 things to know about racial and ethnic disparities in special education

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5 things to know about racial and ethnic disparities in special education

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1. There are wide disparities in disability identification by race and ethnicity
2. Many children of color with disabilities experience segregated education system
3. In a single year, 1 in 5 black, American Indian, and multiracial boys with disabilities were suspended in school
4. IDEA provisions intended to address racial and ethnic disparities are underused
5. Greater flexibility to implement comprehensive, coordinated early intervening services (CEIS) may help school districts address special education disparities, and improve academic outcomes for children of color with disabilities

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Each year, roughly 6 million students with disabilities, ages 6 to 21, receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Although special education is a source of critical services and supports for these students, students of color with disabilities still face a number of obstacles impeding their ability to succeed in school. In 2015, only 3 percent of black and Hispanic 12th -grade students with disabilities achieved proficiency in reading, while practically none achieved proficiency in math.

In late December 2016, the U.S. Department of Education issued final rules to prompt states to proactively address racial and ethnic disparities in the identification, placement, and discipline of children with disabilities. That same month, they released comprehensive legal guidance describing schools' obligations under federal civil rights and disabilities studies not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the administration of special education. To help educators, school communities, and education officials understand the challenges prompting these initiatives, here are five critical facts about racial and ethnic disparities in special education:

1There are wide disparities in disability identification by race and ethnicity.

In general, students of color are disproportionately overrepresented among children with disabilities: black students are 40 percent more likely, and American Indian students are 70 percent more likely, to be identified as having disabilities than are their peers. The overrepresentation of particular demographics varies depending on the type of disability, and disparities are particularly prevalent for so-called high-incidence disabilities, including specific learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. Black students are twice as likely to be identified as having emotional disturbance and intellectual disability as their peers. American Indian students are twice as likely to be identified as having specific learning disabilities, and four times as likely to be identified as having developmental delays. Research does not support the conclusion that race and ethnic disproportionality in special education is due to differences in socioeconomic status between groups. Efforts to reduce disparity, then, should support more widespread screening for developmental delays among young children, and should assist educators in identifying disabilities early and appropriately to address student needs. One study found that 4-year-old black children were also disproportionately underrepresented in early childhood special education and early intervention programs.

2Many children of color with disabilities experience a segregated education system.

While children with disabilities have been placed in more inclusive education settings since the early 1990s, progress toward inclusion has not improved over the last decade, specifically. To ensure greatest access to rigorous academic content, IDEA statute requires that children with disabilities receive their education in the least restrictive environment, alongside children without disabilities to the maximum extent appropriate. However, in 2014, children of color with disabilities-including 17 percent of black students, and 21 percent of Asian students-were placed in the regular classroom, on average, less than 40 percent of the school day. By comparison, 11 percent of white and American Indian or Alaskan Native children with disabilities were similarly placed.

3In a single year, 1 in 5 black, American Indian, and multiracial boys with disabilities were suspended from school.

According to the U.S. Department of Education's 2013 to 2014 Civil Rights Data Collection, students with disabilities (12 percent) are twice as likely as their peers without disabilities (5 percent) to receive at least one out-of-school suspension. Suspension from school is associated with an increased risk of dropout, grade retention, and contact with the juvenile justice system. To ensure students' access to a free and appropriate public education, as promised by IDEA, schools should take care to address both academic and behavioral needs in the development of students' individualized education programs (IEPs).

4IDEA provisions intended to address racial and ethnic disparities are underused.

For example, Section 618(d) of IDEA requires states to identify school districts with significant disproportionality, by race or ethnicity, in the identification, placement, or discipline of children with disabilities. Such school districts must reserve 15 percent of federal funds provided under IDEA, Part B to implement comprehensive, coordinated early intervening services to address the disparity. However, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Government Accountability Office, each year, 3 percent or less of all school districts are identified as having significant disproportionality. In 2013, 75 percent of the identified school districts were located in seven states. That same year, 22 states did not identify any districts with significant disproportionality. While there is no consensus definition of significant disproportionality - as the term refers to an IDEA legal standard, to be decided on by states, the U.S. Department of Education published preliminary data identifying extensive racial and ethnic disparities in every state in the union. Under the new final rule from the U.S. Department of Education, all states will be required to follow a standard approach to define and identify significant disproportionality in school districts.

5Greater flexibility to implement comprehensive, coordinated early intervening services (CEIS) may help school districts address special education disparities, and improve academic outcomes for children of color with disabilities.

Historically, school districts with significant disproportionality were prohibited from using comprehensive CEIS to address the needs of preschool children or children with disabilities. Such restrictions would have prevented schools from using comprehensive CEIS for training IEP teams to build better behavioral supports into students' IEPs, even to address placement or discipline disparities. Such restrictions would also have prevented efforts to identify and serve preschool children in order to prevent future disparities in disability identification. Under the new final rule, school districts may implement comprehensive CEIS in a manner that addresses identified racial and ethnic disparities, which may include activities that support students with disabilities and preschool children.

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5 things to know about racial and ethnic disparities in special education - Child Trends

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Each year, roughly 6 million students with disabilities, ages 6 to 21, receive services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Although special education is a source of critical services and supports for these students, students of color with disabilities still face a number of obstacles impeding their ability to succeed in school.

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Racial Disparities and Government Involvement 

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Racial Disparities and Government Involvement 

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School districts are required by IDEA to get involved if the answer is "yes" to any of the following questions...
"three key questions:

Are certain groups of kids identified for special education or identified with particular types of disabilities at different rates?

Are kids of different racial groups placed in more restrictive class settings, like separate classrooms or schools, at different rates than others?

Are kids of different racial and ethnic groups disciplined more often and/or more harshly than others?"

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Understood does not take positions on government policy. Some of our 15 founding partners may, however. That includes our managing founding partner, theNational Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). Our mission at Understood is to make sure parents have the information they need to support their child.

If a school identifies 15 percent of Black kids as having disabilities, but only 5 percent of white kids, is that a problem? What if the Black kids with disabilities are disciplined more frequently or with tougher consequences? This is known in special education as significant disproportionality. And Lindsay Jones, chief policy and advocacy officer for NCLD, says it is indeed a problem.

Here, Jones answers common questions parents may have.

What is significant disproportionality?

Significant disproportionality is when a school district identifies kids from any racial or ethnic group for special education at markedly higher rates than other kids. This is a concern not because kids are being identified as having disabilities, but because they may be identified as having disabilities when they don't actually have one.

And it's not just about identification for services. In fact, there's a provision in special education law that requires school districts to figure out if kids in these groups are treated differently. To do so, they must consider three key questions:

Are certain groups of kids identified for special education or identified with particular types of disabilities at different rates?

Are kids of different racial groups placed in more restrictive class settings, like separate classrooms or schools, at different rates than others?

Are kids of different racial and ethnic groups disciplined more often and/or more harshly than others?

If the answer to any of those questions is "yes," districts are required by IDEA to figure out the cause of the disparity and address the issue.

These disparities can have a negative impact on students for lots of reasons. For instance, kids who are misidentified may not be getting the right supports to succeed in school.

Research shows that minority students and English language learners are not only disproportionately labeled as needing special education services. They are also more likely to be placed in more restrictive settings.

During the 2013-2014 school year, Black students made up nearly 16 percent of students in public schools. But they made up 20 percent of students identified with a specific learning disability (SLD) that year.

That same year, Asian students made up nearly 5 percent of public school students, but only 1.5 percent of students with SLD.

1 in 4 Black boys identified with disabilities are suspended each year, while only 1 in 10 white boys identified with disabilities are suspended.

Research shows that inclusion in general education classrooms (as opposed to restrictive settings) can improve academic and social outcomes for students with disabilities-particularly for students with learning disabilities. And kids who are suspended miss out on important instruction. That can lead to lower levels of educational success.

Watch as LeDerick Horne, poet and activist with learning disabilities, shares his perspective on racial disproportionality in special education:

How has the federal government approached the issue?

While IDEA requires states to address this issue in their districts, a 2013 government study showed that many states were not doing it well. They were not doing a good enough job of looking at their data and addressing issues. In fact, some states set up their systems in a way that they'd likely never identify any districts as having an issue.

The study recommended that the U.S. Department of Education develop a standard approach for states to review and address these disparities. To try to fix the problem, the federal government wrote regulations in 2016 known as the "Equity in IDEA" regulations. These are sometimes referred to as the "Significant Disproportionality" regulations or rules.

This created a way for all states to review their data and set up a fair system across the country. It also gave districts additional flexibility in how they can use IDEA funds to address problems.

The "Significant Disproportionality" regulations are set to take effect in July of 2018. However, the Trump administration is pushing to delay implementation. They would like two more years to do their own analysis of the problem and possibly develop a different approach.

About the Author

About the Author

The Understood Team is made up of passionate writers, editors, and community moderators. Many of them learn and think differently, or have kids who do.

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FAQs on Racial Disparities in Special Education and the "Significant Disproportionality" Rule

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Understood does not take positions on government policy. Some of our 15 founding partners may, however. That includes our managing founding partner, theNational Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD). Our mission at Understood is to make sure parents have the information they need to support their child.

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An article written in 2019, comparing black vs white students in the same socio-economic status instead of everyone grouped together. They did a study across 11 southern states and found that black students are 44% more likely than the white students to receive special education. BUT when considered factors other than race (similar family income, academic achievement and school characteristics) they found that black students have 45 percent lower odds of receiving special education services than white students.

"When Morgan compares children with the same family income, academic performance and other characteristics, he finds that children of color are less likely to receive special education services than similar white children."

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The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

Decades of research have documented that students of color, particularly black children, are disproportionately classified by schools as having disabilities. In 2016, 12 percent of black children across the nation received services at school for disabilities ranging from emotional disturbances to physical disabilities to intellectual impairment. Only 8.5 percent of white children received those services.

The disability rate for Hispanic students - 9.4 percent nationally - is only slightly higher than for whites and the disparity hasn't been as contentious as the disproportionality for blacks. Some academics and advocates have argued that disability status had become a tool to perpetuate racial segregation, especially in the South.

Beginning in 1997, a series of laws and regulations were put into place to monitor and fix how schools across the country put children of different races and ethnicities in special education. Most recently in 2016, the Obama administration revamped these rules to make them more uniform across states. But U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has delayed implementation. The matter is now tied up in the courts.

Against the backdrop of this civil rights debate, some quantitative researchers are arguing that the earlier research may have inadvertently misidentified the equity problem. Two new studies by independent groups of scholars find that students of color are actually less likely than similar white students to be identified as having disabilities and obtain special education services at schools.

"We have stronger evidence that there may be bias, but it's running in the opposite direction than we thought," said Paul Morgan, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University. "You're more likely to be identified with a disability if you're white and English speaking. That's an inequity."

Morgan said there's a lot of "untreated need" among students of color.

Morgan has published a series of articles in partnership with George Farkas at the University of California, Irvine. He takes apart the raw numbers, which he agrees show that black students across the nation are identified as having disabilities at higher rates than white students. But he points out that black children are disproportionately poor and often grow up in communities without good access to healthcare, which can increase the risk of having a disability. These other factors could legitimately account for the higher disability rates and are not necessarily a result of teacher bias, he said. When Morgan compares children with the same family income, academic performance and other characteristics, he finds that children of color are less likely to receive special education services than similar white children.
Related: The debate over students with disabilities, suspensions and race
Morgan likens the phenomena to asthma. Black children are more frequently diagnosed with asthma than white children but you probably wouldn't accuse pediatricians of making racist diagnoses. Instead, you might reason that black children are more likely to live in poor housing and environmental conditions where they're exposed to more allergens and those conditions are triggering the asthma.

In Morgan and Farkas's newest study, "Are Schools in the U.S. South Using Special Education to Segregate Students by Race?" scheduled for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Exceptional Children, they and four co-authors focus on the South, where many observers have noted disproportionately high rates of black students in special education. Across 11 southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia), black students are 44 percent more likely than white students to receive special education services, compared to 41 percent nationally. Depending on the disability and the school district, children with disabilities are sometimes taught in separate classrooms. In other cases, they remain in general education classes and receive extra services, such as occupational therapy.

When Morgan and his colleagues considered factors other than race, they found that that black students, even in the South, were under-identified for special education services. Specifically, they calculated that southern black students had 45 percent lower odds of receiving special education services than white students who had similar family income, academic achievement and school characteristics. Even among students attending the same school, Morgan found that a black child, on average, was less likely than a similar white child to be identified as having a disability. (Morgan presented his research findings at a conference of the Society for Prevention Research in May 2019.)

This analytical approach has its drawbacks. We can't objectively measure clinical needs in children and then check how well the schools spot disabilities. Instead researchers use proxies, such as poverty, because, statistically, poor children are more likely to be diagnosed as having disabilities. But poverty alone doesn't explain disability rates. Even among kids who are equally poor, a black child is still more likely to be identified for a disability than a white child. And, obviously, disabilities can manifest in children of all income levels.

To arrive at their counterintuitive results, Morgan and Farkas compare kids of equal academic performance. Among children who post the same test scores, a white child is more likely to receive a disability diagnosis. Black students, on average, tend to post lower test scores. Because low-achieving students are more likely to get diagnosed with a disability, such as an intellectual impairment, the raw numbers for disabilities among black students are much higher than for white students.

One Morgan critic, Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, an initiative at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that the test scores themselves are the product of an uneven, racially biased playing field and shouldn't be used to prove that disability rates are right or wrong. From Losen's persective, Morgan is controlling for the racial bias that civil rights advocates want to highlight.
Related: The vast majority of students with disabilities don't get a college degree
A more direct approach to discern if disability rates at school are racially biased was undertaken earlier this year by four researchers who combined Florida birth records with school records. They could see which kids were born prematurely or had a low birthweight and compare health records at birth with disability diagnoses at school. These researchers also found, just as Morgan and Farkas have, that both black and Hispanic students were less likely to be identified with disabilities than similar white students.

This birth records study, " School segregation and racial gaps in special education identification," was circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in May 2019. It hasn't yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, which means it could still be revised, but it was produced by four highly regarded quantitative researchers at Michigan State University, Northwestern University and American University.

The birth records study drilled down further to each school in Florida and discovered that getting diagnosed with a disability depends greatly on a child's classmates. Black students were over-identified for disabilities in schools that are dominated by white students. By contrast, black students were substantially under-identified in schools that have high percentages of students of color. (They discovered a similar but less dramatic trend for Hispanic students.)

"Black and Hispanic students may 'stand out' in schools comprised of mostly white students, making their perceived disabilities more readily noticed," the authors wrote in their paper.

"The 'threshold' disability level that triggers an identification may be substantially higher in heavily minority schools than in heavily white schools," the authors added.

More than 40 percent of the nation's black and Hispanic students attend racially isolated schools in which more than 90 percent of the students are students of color. And that helps explain why under identification of disabilities may be the bigger problem today.

Special education services are expensive, often more than double the cost of educating a child who doesn't have a disability. Roughly 6.4 million public school students in the U.S. receive special education services annually, at an estimated cost of nearly $40 billion. The federal government foots only a small part of the bill, leaving localities and states to pay for the rest. It's not surprising that white, well-resourced families might be more effective at fighting for these dollars for their children than black or Hispanic families.

Morgan argues that current federal rules on disproportionality make it hard for school districts to grant disability status to substantially more black students than white students and that's denying treatment to black students who have clinical needs. Meanwhile UCLA'S Losen contends that this is not a reason to relax the disproportionality rules. He says that individual schools that are over-identifying students of color for disabilities, such as the white-dominated schools in the birth records study, still need to be monitored and reformed.

The debate continues.

This story about disproportionality in special education was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
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New studies challenge the claim that black students are sent to special ed too much

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The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox. Decades of research have documented that students of color, particularly black children, are disproportionately classified by schools as having disabilities.

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A study on the link between health backgrounds and special education. It discusses that birth records and health backgrounds can determine whether or not a child will receive special education later on. Any child with, for example, fetal alcohol syndrome, will most likely receive special education. Due to socioeconomic status are minorities more likely to have more severe health issues?
The study also links race and school demographics to minorities getting placed in special education.

“'Our findings suggest that schools are more likely to incorrectly say a student has disabilities when he or she is racially different from the student body as a whole,' Imberman said"

links original study PDF

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Racial disparity in special education is growing, and it's more complex than previously thought. New research from Michigan State University examined how often black and Hispanic students are identified as needing special education compared to white students, leading to new findings on disproportionality and racial gaps.

"When it comes to special education demographics, people generally believe that minority students are put into special ed programs more frequently than white students, and if you look just at the raw numbers, that's generally true," said co-author Scott Imberman, MSU professor of economics and education policy. "But this doesn't consider background factors, particularly health, which can determine a lot about a child. When looking at numbers and data more closely, what many think about this racial disproportionality gets turned on its head."

The research findings, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, revealed that black and Hispanic students are put into special education more often in white schools. But, they are much less likely to be identified as needing special education in schools that are mostly minority, where they are surrounded by students of the same race. Additionally, black and Hispanic students are put into special education programs less frequently than white students who have similar health backgrounds.

For example, a black student in fourth grade attending a school that was more than 90 percent minority was 6 percentage points less likely to be identified for special education than a similar white student. At the same time, if a student attends a mostly white school, he or she is 3 percentage points more likely to be identified than a similar white student.

To uncover these racial gaps, Imberman - along with MSU co-author Todd Elder, David Figlio from Northwestern University and Claudia Persico from American University - analyzed birth and education records for all 869,000 children born in Florida between 1992 and 2002. Imberman explained that prior special education research did not examine health data, which is a critical piece of information because it reveals traits well before the children go to school that could lead to a child to needing special education.

"Birth records show details about a child's weight and any congenital abnormalities or birth complications, like if the baby needed ventilation or suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome," Imberman said. "Newborn health issues oftentimes lead to a child needing special ed services later on. With this data, we generated a prediction of a special education needs for healthy white students that we used as our baseline when comparing black and Hispanic students."

Beyond being the first to use health data, this research also is the first to link students' special education needs with a school's racial demographics. This revealed that special education rates weren't necessarily about a student's race - but rather about how that student's race compares to the school's racial makeup, Imberman said.

"Our findings suggest that schools are more likely to incorrectly say a student has disabilities when he or she is racially different from the student body as a whole," Imberman said.

Imberman said that policies related to disproportionality in special education, such as the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act, may need to be reexamined so that students who need special education services are getting them.

"Overall, we need a better understanding of how we can overcome these disproportionalities for students," he said. "In order to tackle bigger issues like income inequality and wealth later in life, we need to understand what students are going through early on - particularly in education systems."

(Note for media: Please include a link to the original paper in online coverage: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25829)

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The new racial disparity in special education

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Racial disparity in special education is growing, and it's more complex than previously thought. New research from MSU examined how often black and Hispanic students are identified as needing special education compared to white students, leading to new findings on disproportionality and racial gaps.

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In December of 2016, the United States Department of Education (USED) finalized guidance and regulations to address racial and ethnic disparities in special education eligibility, placement, and school discipline. Disproportionality in special education placement and school discipline are issues that need to be addressed by educators and policymakers, as students of color-especially students of color with disabilities-are disproportionately subjected to exclusionary discipline and may more often be placed in segregated settings that limit their access to a rich, rigorous education. The focus of this paper, however, is on the issue of identification of students of color as having learning and other disabilities. We will issue future papers on placement and discipline.

When the Department issued its new policy documents four years ago, the agency noted the commonly accepted fact that "children of color with disabilities are overrepresented within the special education population." The Department also noted that it is critical to "ensure that overrepresentation is not the result of misidentification, including both over- and under-identification," and that it is equally important to "ensure that all children who are suspected of having a disability are evaluated and, as appropriate, receive needed special education and related services in the most appropriate setting."

To address under-identification, the guidance issued by USED reiterated the longstanding and important legal requirement that "[s]tudents with disabilities have a civil right to receive necessary individualized special education and/or related aids and services." To address patterns of over-identification, the Department issued new regulations that established the requirement for "...a standard methodology states must use to determine whether significant disproportionality based on race and ethnicity is occurring in the State and in its local educational agencies (LEAs) (81 Fr 92376, 12/9/2016)."

Disproportionality is often explained in the literature as situations when a group's representation in a particular disability category exceeds expectations. It is the position of the Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) that disproportionality in identification involves both under- and over-identification of students of color. Disproportionate identification is complex, context dependent, and the result of a number of factors. Using "a standard methodology" to guard against over-identification is important. If, however, State Educational Agencies (SEAs) do so without meeting their responsibility to ensure every student's legal right to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) under the law, children with disabilities may not receive the services and supports that they both need and deserve. LDA advocates for policies and practices that will ensure each child is considered as an individual with a unique set of circumstances. We assert that racial, ethnic, language, and economic factors should not create barriers to receiving the services and supports afforded by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Debate over disproportionality has long focused on the over-representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education. As early as 1968, Dunn proposed that educator and societal bias resulted in students of color and in particular, Black students, being placed in special education at a higher rate than their white peers. This emphasis on overidentification and the potential stigmatizing impact of special education eligibility and placement has dominated much of the disproportionality debate (Blanchett, 2006; Codrington & Fairchild, 2012; Hosp & Reschley, 2003). Early studies that did not control for other explanatory variables did indeed find overrepresentation at a descriptive level. More recent research that controls for confounds at the individual student level, and so compares similarly situated students, challenges the prevailing assertion that children of color are consistently over-identified for special education.

A number of researchers (Elder, et. al., 2019; Fish, 2019; Morgan et. al. 2015 & 2017; Shifrer, 2018; Shifrer, et. al., 2011) find that in many situations, students of color are less likely than their white peers to be identified and to receive special education services, despite demonstrating similar levels of academic performance and behavior, even when attending the same schools. Under-identification of students of color with disabilities occurs prior to and following school entry in general and across specific disability conditions (Constantino, 2020; Dababnah et. al., 2018 and Morgan et al., 2012). Achievement gaps have recently been reported to largely explain minority over-representation in special education (Farkas et al., 2020; Shifrer, 2018). Control for these gaps indicated that, on average, U.S. school districts are more likely to identify and provide special education services to white students than to Black or Hispanic students. Studies in public health also find that students of color are less likely to be diagnosed and receive treatment for health conditions including disabilities (Flores et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2008). Students of color are less likely on average to be identified as having learning disabilities including dyslexia as well as comorbid conditions such as speech or language impairments or ADHD (Bax et al., 2019; Constantino, et. al., 2020, Morgan et al., 2016; Morgan et al., 2017; Odegard et al., 2020). There is evidence, however, that students of color are more likely to receive less socially desirable classifications such as emotional disturbance and intellectual disabilities (Harper, 2017). It is the experience of LDA members that often, students of color are misidentified as intellectually disabled or emotionally or behaviorally disordered when in fact they have undiagnosed learning disabilities.

Researchers have found that context plays a role in that students of color attending schools that were primarily non-white, were less likely to be identified with a qualifying disability than those attending predominantly white schools (Fish, 2019; Hibel et al., 2010; Odegard et. al., 2020; Elder, et. al., 2019; Shifrer & Fish, 2019). While still finding under-identification in students of color overall, Shifrer and Fish suggest the likelihood that a student is classified as having a disability seems to be higher in cases when the student is distinctive from the majority of students in the school in terms of "nonclinical qualities" such as race and English learner status (2019, p. 1). Fish notes (2019) that a higher proportion of "...teachers of color may help remediate disparities in access to special education services" (p. 221). Cooc (2017) found that, when teachers compared white students and students of color with similar academic and behavioral profiles, teachers were less likely to consider the difficulties experienced by students of color as potentially the result of a disability. It is the position of LDA that in order to fully understand and appropriately address disproportionality, states, districts and schools must collect and analyze student identification and academic outcome data that is disaggregated by disability category, age when first identified, race, ethnicity, gender, primary and home language and type and amount of special education. Additionally, LDA recognizes the importance of diverse and well-trained teaching staff in order to best serve the needs of all learners.

The body of evidence establishing the neurobiological basis of learning disabilities is ever increasing. Studies of developmental dyslexia indicate that atypical brain development associated with this disorder is already present in the first 18 months of life, long before any formal education has occurred (Langer, et. al. 2017). While the neurobiological and genetic underpinnings of dyslexia are better understood than those of other learning disabilities, progress is being made in understanding the neural networks involved in specific reading comprehension deficits, math disabilities such as dyscalculia and writing-related disabilities such as dysgraphia.

As researchers come to better understand the neurobiology of learning disabilities, they also affirm the plasticity of the human brain and the ability of environmental factors to mitigate the impact of genetic and other risk factors. Researchers at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard (2016) find that prenatal and childhood healthcare, good nutrition, high-quality preschool education, and early intervention help improve learning outcomes for children. Unfortunately, access to the very things that have been proven to contribute to healthy brain development continues to be inequitable. For example, a report recently released by the National Institute for Early Education Research finds that the quality of early childhood education programs attended by Black children in the United States continues to be lower than that of those attended by White non-Hispanic students (2020). LDA advocates for increased funding in order to ensure equitable access to high-quality healthcare, nutrition, and education for all children.

While environmental factors such as healthcare and early child education can positively impact neurobiological development, there is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that environments that increase exposure to toxins can alter brain development and neurobiology in a negative manner. Lead exposure has long been linked to learning and attention disorders. The Children's Environmental Health Center has published a list of other chemicals found in consumer products and in the environment that are linked to learning disabilities and autism (2012). A recent study found that prenatal exposure to chemicals in flame retardants had a specific effect on the efficiency of the reading neural network (Margolis et. al., 2020). There is a significant body of research that has established that economically disadvantaged communities, which are disproportionately populated by people of color, are more likely to be exposed to a variety of environmental toxins including lead, mercury, and harmful chemicals, like Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) found in flame retardants, organophosphate pesticides and phthalates (Nguyen, et. al., 2020, TENDR, 2016 and Zota et. al, 2008 & 2010). Children from those communities typically also attend schools fraught with exposure to environmental toxins (Philadelphia Inquirer, 2019). Giving priority attention to the role of educator bias in the discussion of disproportionality in special education identification has the effect of shifting attention away from other social inequities that could be having a significant impact on the rate of learning and other disabilities among specific populations. LDA's Healthy Children Project works to reduce chemical exposures harmful to brain development and health especially among pregnant women and children, and advocates for environmental justice and the right of all children to grow, learn and develop in toxin-free environments.

Embedded within arguments that students of color are overrepresented in special education, is an underlying assumption that special education is harmful to students and that receiving special education limits educational outcomes. Ford & Russo (2016) suggest that thousands of Black students have been misidentified and placed into special education needlessly. More troubling, they suggest that special education has denied the students their potential. Shifrer et. al. (2013) did indeed find that students with learning disabilities were less likely to take college preparatory coursework than their non-disabled peers and that this was often due to school level policies that limit access to such courses for students receiving special education. Data also shows that students of color and low-income students are more likely to receive special education services in segregated settings. Special education should always be designed and delivered in a manner that supports the highest level of achievement for students with disabilities. The goal should always be to remove rather than create barriers to high achievement. What has denied students of color, their potential, especially students of color with disabilities, is the inability of schools to provide quality education and special education services due to inadequate funding, inadequate teacher training, and low expectations.

There is repeated rigorous evidence that special education services can help improve student outcomes, especially when children are identified early and receive evidence-based supports (Hanushek et al., 2002, Hurwitz et. al. 2020; Schwartz, Hopkins & Stiefel, 2019; Blachman, et. al., 2004). Families and advocates of students with dyslexia have made great strides in securing accurate diagnosis and evidence-based interventions, yet students of color are not reaping the same benefits as their white counterparts (Bowen, 2013; Odegard et. al., 2020; Romney, 2020). When students of color experience barriers that limit access to services and supports they are legally entitled to, achievement gaps are likely exacerbated (Anastasiou et. al, 2017). LDA urges researchers and policymakers to focus on enhancing and improving special education by assisting educators with research-informed identification methods and supporting the implementation of evidence-based instruction, intervention and accommodations in order to ensure that all students receive the services they need.

Educator bias certainly has a role in the disproportionate identification of students of color. Framing language, cultural, and dialectical differences as deficits can indeed result in the misidentification of culturally and linguistically diverse students as having learning or other disabilities (Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009). LDA recognizes the need for educator training to distinguish differences from disability and to ensure that the implicit biases of educators do not create barriers to educational attainment for any student. Concomitant use of pedagogical frameworks developed to address student differences, such as culturally responsive teaching and universal design for learning, are key to supporting diverse learners (Kieran & Anderson, 2019). LDA calls on researchers and publishing companies to develop culturally sensitive screening and diagnostic assessments for the purpose of ensuring all students with learning and other disabilities are properly identified and supported. We call on educators, researchers and policymakers to acknowledge that more than the biases of individuals are at play when large numbers of children in schools that are predominantly populated by students of color are not receiving the interventions and services to which they are legally entitled (Odegard et. al., 2020); when low-income students of color struggle to get the evaluations they are legally entitled to (Zimmerman, 2019; Mosley, 2020); when children of color are significantly more likely to live and learn in toxic environments (Bell, 2016), and when due process remedies are widely inaccessible. Data such as these, combined with the well documented racialized educational opportunity gaps (Shifrer, 2013), strongly suggest that systemic racism and structural inequalities function to disproportionately disadvantage students with disabilities from historically marginalized communities. Studies recently reporting under-identification are consistent with systemic bias resulting in students of color with disabilities often not being provided the supports to which they are legally entitled.
Summary:
LDA visualizes a world in which learning disabilities are universally understood, so all individuals are accepted, supported, and empowered to live a self-determined life. Until we fully understand and address the nuances and complexities of disproportionality in identification for special education and ensure that systemic racism, social inequities, and implicit bias do not serve as barriers to identification and appropriate supports, that vision cannot be achieved. SEAs must never cease their focus on guarding against both over- under-identification of students for special education services; focusing on one to the exclusion of the other will undoubtedly harm our most vulnerable students. LDA demands that educators, researchers, and policymakers remain focused on IDEA's mandate that the unique characteristics and individualized needs of each child be the driver of special education eligibility decisions.
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Hurwitz, S., Perry, B., Cohen, E. D., & Skiba, R. (2020). Special Education and Individualized Academic Growth: A Longitudinal Assessment of Outcomes for Students With Disabilities. American Educational Research Journal, 57(2), 576-611. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831219857054

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Download the PDF of this Core Principle here.
Based on the purpose of the Learning Disabilities Association of America to create opportunities for success for all individuals affected by learning disabilities through support, education and advocacy, LDA's Core Principles were developed and approved by the Board of Directors of LDA to establish a set of standards and guidelines reflecting the positions and philosophies of our organization.

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Core Principles: Disproportionality in Identification for Special Education

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In December of 2016, the United States Department of Education (USED) finalized guidance and regulations to address racial and ethnic disparities in special education eligibility, placement, and school discipline.

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Article with various charts and graphs showing the statistics on different topics related to special education, statistics on race and percentage in special education, and demographics of special education teachers.

Article also asks, are schools over identifying minority students?
Answer: "Federal law requires that states monitor their districts for overidentifying students with disabilities. Several studies have found that minority students are actually being under identified for disabilities. But some new studies are uncovering more nuanced findings, suggesting that minority students are overidentified in some contexts, and underidentified in others" and provides links for further reading on the matter.

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Definition of special education

Special education encompasses the programs which serve students with mental, physical, emotional, and behavioral disabilities. The major law governing special education is the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees a "free appropriate public education" to children with disabilities and mandates that, to the "maximum extent appropriate," they be educated with their nondisabled peers in the "least restrictive environment." Read more.

How many students are in special education?

In the U.S. overall, 13.7 percent of all students were special education students (ages 3-21) in 2017-18. The percentage varied by state from 9.2 percent in Texas to 19.2 percent in New York.

Share of special education students by state

See the percent of special education students by state in the map below:

Has the number of students served in special education increased?

Yes. In the past decade, the number of students with disabilities has grown from 6.5 million, or 13.4 percent of all students in 2007-08, to almost 7 million, or 13.7 percent in 2017-18.

Special education statistics by race

While overall, 13.7 percent of public school students were served by IDEA in 2017-18, that number varies by race and ethnicity.

White students - 14.1% served under IDEA

Black students - 16.0%

Hispanic students - 13.0%

Asian students - 7.1%

Pacific Islander students - 10.9%

American Indian/Alaska Native students - 17.5%

Two or more race students - 13.8%

Are schools overidentifying minority students with disabilities?

Federal law requires that states monitor their districts for overidentifying students with disabilities. Several studies have found that minority students are actually being underidentified for disabilities.

But some new studies are uncovering more nuanced findings, suggesting that minority students are overidentified in some contexts, and underidentified in others. Read more.

What are the demographics of special education teachers?

Although research has shown that students often do better in school when they have a teacher of the same race, just over 82 percent of special education teachers in public schools are white, roughly similar to the teaching population as a whole, according to the most recent data available. But only about half of students receiving special education services are white, according to 2017-18 data.

Read more about efforts to prepare, recruit, and retain special education teachers of color.

Inclusion statistics

A majority of special education students-63.4 percent of those aged 6-21-spend 80 percent or more of their time in regular education classes, according to 2017 data. That number has more than doubled in recent decades. In 1989, only 31.7 percent of students spent 80 percent or more of their time in regular classes.

Getting students with disabilities into general education classrooms is not a silver bullet, researchers say. Read more to learn what else needs to happen to raise academic outcomes for students with disabilities.

Learning disabilities statistics

The specific learning disabilities category is the most common one covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - in 2017-18, 33.6 percent of students with disabilities had specific learning disabilities.

Autism statistics

Just over 10 percent of all students with disabilities have been diagnosed with autism alone, according to 2017-18 data.

Which disability categories have grown the most?

In the past decade, the number of students with disabilities as a percentage of total enrollment has increased a small amount, from 13.4 percent in 2007-08 to 13.7 percent in 2017-18. The disabilities those students have, however, have changed dramatically.

The percent of students with disabilities who had a specific learning disability, like dyslexia, decreased from 38.9 percent to 33.6 percent in 2017-18. And the percent of students with disabilities with autism more than doubled, from 4.5 percent to 10.2 percent.

How much money is spent on special education by the federal government?

In fiscal year 2018, the federal government earmarked $12.3 billion for the education of children ages 3-12 with disabilities. That's only about 15 percent of the excess cost of educating students with disabilities, compared with the cost of educating a general education student. The federal government under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Act set a goal to pay states up to 40 percent of the excess cost - it never reached that goal.

What is the student-teacher ratio for special education students?

In 2016, there were 17.1 special education students for each special education teacher in the United States. That's higher than the overall student-teacher ratio of 16.2 students per teacher.

Over the past decade the number of special education teachers has decreased by 17 percent, while the number of special education students only dropped by 1 percent. Read more about how that plays out on the school level.

For more information on special education, check out our Special Education topics page.

How to Cite This Article
Editorial Projects in Education. (2019, December 17). Special Education: Definition, Statistics, and Trends. Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/special-populations/

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Special Education: Definition, Statistics, and Trends

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Special education encompasses the programs which serve students with mental, physical, emotional, and behavioral disabilities. The major law governing special education is the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees a "free appropriate public education" to children with disabilities and mandates that, to the "maximum extent appropriate," they be educated with their nondisabled peers in the "least restrictive environment."

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An extremely interesting study with the hypothesis' of  "Students in schools with higher proportions of teachers of color will have reduced odds of special education receipt" and "Students of color attending schools with more teachers of color will experience lower odds of special education receipt". Through research, both hypothesis were proven to be incorrect. With the presence of colored teacher, minority students have a higher chance of being identified for special education because they are more likely to view low performance as a serious problem and not just a stereotype.

"This may suggest in line with

existing research on bias in teachers’ expectations of students  that they are being held to lower expectations than their White peers and are therefore generally less likely than White students to be referred for special education testing"

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A professor at PSU discusses that a students socioeconomic status is the key factor in their success. Students that begin school at a disadvantage (due to poverty and lack of early childhood programs) are more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability. The professor goes on to say that more needs to be invested into early childhood programming to give the students that are at a socioeconomic disadvantage a better start.

"The way learning disabilities are diagnosed is basically based on academic achievement," Shifrer said. "But education performance is a measure of a lot of things -- partly your brain, but it's also the things you're experiencing in your home, in your neighborhood, in your schools."

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A new Portland State University study suggests that the disproportionate placement of racial minorities into special education for learning disabilities is largely because of social inequities outside of schools rather than racially biased educators.

Some attribute the overplacement to educators being racist, but when researchers use statistical techniques to compare youth with similar academic achievement levels and socioeconomic status, racial minorities are actually less likely to be labeled as having a learning disability than white children.

Some researchers suggest this means that more racial minorities need to be placed in special-education classes, but Dara Shifrer, a sociology professor in PSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and author of a study published July 27 in The Sociological Quarterly, interprets the findings differently.

Shifrer says the problem lies in the fact that a student's socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of academic achievement, which is often used to diagnose learning disabilities. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be poor and begin school at a disadvantage compared to their white peers, but classifying the low achievement of minority and poor students as a disability fails to address the social causes behind the achievement gap, according to the study.

"It's not that we need to put more racial minorities in special education," Shifrer said. "It's that we need to pay attention to all the inequality in our society that makes kids have different levels of preparation when they start school and that makes it difficult for teachers to decide why one kid is struggling to learn while another is not."

The study says racial disproportionality is problematic because not only is it unclear whether special education improves students' outcomes, but disability labels can stigmatize students for life and limit their learning opportunities.

The study criticizes the way learning disabilities are diagnosed. Most youth who are diagnosed with learning disabilities have normal or above-average intelligence but for unexplained reasons are underachievers. But because there's a lack of physical or biological indicators for LDs, classifications are often subjective and inconsistent across districts and states.

Some youth who are labeled as "learning disabled" may in fact have real neurological or biological distinctions, but for others, their learning and behavior problems may stem from differences in the resources available to their families.

"The way learning disabilities are diagnosed is basically based on academic achievement," Shifrer said. "But education performance is a measure of a lot of things -- partly your brain, but it's also the things you're experiencing in your home, in your neighborhood, in your schools."

Shifrer suggests that rather than addressing the social issue of inequality with disability labels and special education, more needs to be invested in early childhood programming so schools can provide additional health, emotional and academic supports to the children who need them most.

She also says that educators and policymakers need to be clearer about what they know and don't know about learning disabilities. Doing so would allow teachers, parents and students to incorporate useful insights from the classification without feeling like it seals a child's destiny or captures their complexity.

"If we keep taxing teachers with figuring out who's learning disabled and who's not when there's not even a clear definition of what learning disabled means, the problem's not going to go away," Shifrer said.

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educational psychology; k-12 education; learning disorders; racial issues; educational policy; poverty and learning; stem education; racial disparity

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More minorities labeled 'learning disabled' because of social inequities, study finds

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A new Portland State University study suggests that the disproportionate placement of racial minorities into special education for learning disabilities is largely because of social inequities outside of schools rather than racially biased educators.

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Special education expert, Laura Schifter, talks about the process of referral for special education, IDEA, and what policies are in place to prevent disproportionality. She discusses the need for appropriate identification of special education, and how after low income students are identified they are more likely to be segregated and not inclusive.

"one of the things that we saw is that low income students were much more likely to be identified in categories like emotional disability and intellectual disability"

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Lecturer Laura Schifter - an expert on federal education policy and special education - explains disproportionality and why so many students of color are placed in special education, often in separate classrooms from their peers. While income status is sometimes accepted as the reason behind this phenomenon, Schifter says that doesn't tell the full story. In this EdCast, Schifter shares recent research on this issue and discusses the challenges facing special education.

TRANSCRIPT

Jill Anderson: I am Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. Harvard special education expert, Laura Schifter says income status doesn't entirely explain the whole story regarding why students of color, especially black students, are more often labeled with some of the most stigmatizing emotional and intellectual disabilities in special education and then placed in separate classrooms. I spoke to Laura about the longstanding issue of disproportionality in special education and what she discovered in a recent study looking at this persistent problem.

Laura Schifter: The disproportionality of students of color in special education has been a concern with special education law and with practice since IDEA originally passed in 1975 and there's been kind of this March where additional studies have looked at it. Policy has changed on how it addresses disproportionality in special education over time. And one of the things that continues to be questioned in the looks around disproportionality in special education for students of color is what is the relationship between low income students and students of color and disproportionality.

But researchers hadn't really dug into that yet. And why this is important is that people made the argument that if there are more low income students who are also students of color and we know that there are higher rates of disability among low income students because of things like access to healthcare, exposure to lead, low birth weight, then we would expect to see that students of color would be in special education at higher rates. And one of the things that we wanted to dig into more as school districts really and states really started collecting more data on this is to test whether that assumption holds up or to what extent that assumption holds up that low income students are more identified for special education.

And whether the disproportionality that we see of low income students in special education is only the result of a higher rate of low income students among students of color. So that's what really drove us to look at this is to try and break down these different pieces and then think about what are the implications for the students and what are the implications for the schools based on what we see.

Jill Anderson: So tell me a little bit more about what you did find out because it sounds like there's a lot of reasons that you might end up seeing disproportionate numbers of kids in these classes.

Laura Schifter: First, we looked at the identification for low income students in special education and what we did in our study is we had administrative data, which means the data, all the students in the state across three different states, two moderately sized states and one large state. And what we did when we looked at that is we looked at, okay, well what are the rates of identification for low income students in special education as compared to non low income students. And we did find that low income students were more likely to be identified.

Now one of the things that did raise some concerns for us or flags about what this means for students in school is we looked at how low income students were identified for special education across different disability classifications. And one of the things that we saw is that low income students were much more likely to be identified in categories like emotional disability and intellectual disability where some of the determinations being made about those categories are a little more complex and are determined by multiple people and stakeholders than something that's considered more clear cut in an identification, like a visual impairment or hearing impairment.

And we did find that low income students, the disproportionality and identification and some of those softer disability categories was much higher than those other categories. And then another flag for concerns for us for low income students was what happens after their identification. One of the things that we need to think about is whether identification for special education is appropriate. We need to think about those factors kind of going into the process of identification as well as after the student is identified, what happens to that student in the school.

And one of the things that we found for students from low income families is that they were much more likely to be placed in substantially separate classrooms and segregated from their non-disabled peers after they were identified for special education.

Jill Anderson: Is it pretty well known that that is not a good thing in education to have special education students separated? That's like the whole point not to separate them. So is that something most educators seem to know?

Laura Schifter: Yeah. So it's really tricky because one of the things that's in special education law is a requirement that students be placed in the least restrictive environment. And now the least restrictive environment is somewhat flexible in how it's interpreted. It doesn't mean that 100% of the time all students with disabilities are educated alongside of non-disabled peers and the preference is towards inclusive classrooms. And what we've seen over time is the more that teachers know about what they're able to do in the classrooms, the more technology has advanced.

The more that we've realized that more kids with disabilities can be included in general education and meet expectations that people would not expect. But there is still the practice that some kids need specialized instruction in specialized classrooms. Where that becomes concerning is what we really need to think about is whether the outcomes of the students in those classes are good. And for some students at the individual level, maybe they are, but I think where we see concerns is when we look at the patterns across school districts and across states is students in those placements are much more likely to be disciplined than students without those placements.

They're much less likely to graduate from high school, much less likely to do well on achievement tests, much less likely to enroll in college. And I think some of those patterns really raised the concern about whether those placements are actually good for the vast majority of students that get them.

Jill Anderson: The study looked at three states and I know there was a lot of variability in what happened in those states, but was there a way to really know what students were accurately placed and which students maybe weren't? It seems like that might be hard to track or figure out.

Laura Schifter: It is hard to track and figure out at the level at which we're looking at. So we're looking at it at a systems level and I think what some of the evidence that we have raises questions about is it really indicates a pattern that would suggest that maybe not all of the decisions that we are making are appropriate. So when we see differences that pop up in certain categories that are determined more by the educators within the school district instead of medical professionals, when we see patterns that indicate that these students also have segregated placements, these are indications that at a systems level we really need to ask ourselves what are practices on referral?

What are the programs that we have in the school that might be funneling kids to certain placements over other kids? How well prepared are general educators in the classroom to teach students with different needs in the classroom and diverse learning needs?How does the diversity of our teacher population reflect the diversity of the students in the classroom? All of these things may then lead to increased referrals in special education and that might be a data point that we should use as a diagnostic and say, okay, well we need to look at what's going on in our school and in our school district more to better understand why we are getting these outcomes that we are.

And in some cases, the district may review that and say, you know what, our practices are right. We just have a really effective program and this number is identifying kids appropriately. In other places, what you might find out is we have a system where our classroom management across our school is really variable and we're not providing enough supports for students to understand how they're supposed to behave in our classroom from one year to the next. And that's actually leading to more disruptive behavior from our students.

And if we switch the way that we think about how we have classroom management in our schools, then maybe we'll decrease the number of students that are referring and if using things like positive behavior, interventions and supports in a school wide way, what we may see is then decrease in the number of students who are being referred to special education for discipline issues or emotional issues.

Jill Anderson: This seems like something that's very difficult to do. So I did want to talk a little bit about what that process of evaluating a student for special education might look like.

Laura Schifter: First, one important thing to understand is that to be identified for special education under the law, it requires that you meet two criteria. The first one is that the child has a disability and that's a disability, one of 13 disability categories. And importantly the other factor is that the child needs special education to access the curriculum. So it has to be both of those factors. And what that means is that in school, not all kids with disabilities are eligible for special education.

What that also means is that not all students that need extra support should be eligible for special education. And one of the things that becomes tricky is because sometimes those factors are maybe a little bit more complicated to determine is that there might be fudging of those two criteria based on the context to either get what they think the student needs going forward. Now, the way that the process usually works is it starts with a referral for special education. That referral usually comes from a teacher or a parent when they've noticed that something is not going well for the child.

Once a referral happens, there's an evaluation that's conducted and the evaluation may take the component of an educational psychologist administering a psychoeducational assessment. But it also factors in information from the teacher reviewing the student within the context of their classroom. And what happens after that is that a team of professionals come together for an eligibility meeting. And this is one of the things that we do in my class is we have students simulate that eligibility process where all the different people in the room.

This includes an educational psychologist, a special educator, the general education teacher, representative from the school district, that might be the principal or a special ed director as well as the parent of the child or guardian of the child, and they all come together to have this conversation about what the evaluation has uncovered and then they make a determination as a group about whether that child should be identified special education. And one of the things that we found even in doing this simulation multiple times with the students in the class that I take, is that they realize how complex this process is.

And they only have information on their student for about 10 minutes. But even with just gathering that information with 10 minutes about the student, different factors play into the determination of whether they're persuaded to decide that that child should be eligible for special education or not. Some of those factors might be how well prepared the teacher feels to discipline their classroom. The principal might have things on their mind in terms of what supports they could actually provide the student and whether they have the ability to get the student what they need within their school district if they do find the child eligible.

And one of the things that people who take on the role of the parent consistently say is how after the simulation begins, they experience the process of feeling defensive about their child when there are seven other people in the room telling them about what they see the negative things are going on with their child and that the parent feels disempowered to advocate on behalf of what they see are the needs of their child. The important thing to understand about the eligibility process for special education is that it's not simple and it's really complex.

And because of that, what we really need to think about from the perspective of practitioners and from the perspective of policy makers is we really need to be able to ask ourselves through this process, are we making the best decisions for the child or are we making the decisions that we have to make because of the context of our system? Thinking about things in different ways can lead to some of these systems questions that may lead to us looking for different supports in that way.

Jill Anderson: Wow. Because I'm listening to you, I'm thinking it sounds like there's a lot of complexity to the entire system beyond just the eligibility process that make this really difficult work to do.

Laura Schifter: Yeah. Yeah. It's certainly a difficult work to do and I think people have good intentions going into this work and it's important to recognize that as well. When we think about things from a systems perspective and a policy perspective, I think one of the things that we need to do is think about it through the lens of how can we create the best conditions possible for this complex system to go in a good way for kids. It is really concerning that there have been some recent studies that have come out that really raise a flag that general education teachers don't feel well prepared to meet the needs of kids with disabilities in their classroom.

If teachers don't feel prepared to meet the needs of kids with disabilities within their classroom or kids who behave differently within their classroom, then there will be a kind of trigger to find a solution for that through the path of special education. But one of the things that we can do from assistance perspective is say, okay, well what can our teacher preparation programs do better? If this is a need that teachers have, how can we think about better preparing teachers to meet the needs of kids that we know that every teacher's going to have in their classroom?

That's where things like teaching teachers and teacher prep programs, things like universal design for learning and thinking about frameworks that anticipate diversity in the classroom and equip teachers to know how to provide for supports for students going forward and prepare them for that.

Jill Anderson: Knowing what you've discovered in your research about lower income kids ending up identified more often and students of color, what do we need to change or how can we approach this a little bit differently to be sure that the right kids are being classified in this way?

Laura Schifter: One of the things that's interesting in looking at this issue is that it is consistently thought of as a special education problem. The fact that more students of color identified for special education is always assumed to be a special education problem. It's not. I think the fact that more students are identified for special education actually indicates a problem within our general education system. And it's just a result of the fact that our general education is not meeting the needs of all kids.

And so I think what we need to do is look for opportunities to really bolster general education in a robust way so that it can meet the various needs of kids. I do also think another thing that's important to factor in, as you know, one of the things that we talked about is the idea that identification in and of itself may not be a bad thing. It gives kids rights and access to services. It gives kids access to interventions that a lot of kids really do need, and that's important to recognize.

I think what we need to be concerned of are some of the problems with special education identification and that includes stigma, lower expectations, and the potential to be segregated from your non-disabled peers. One of the other things that we can do is really think about ways to reduce those negative impacts of special education. So what are the ways that schools are reinforcing stigma attached to disability identification? Are there ways that we can tackle that? Are there ways that schools and school systems can tackle the fact that separate programs for kids with disabilities do not have the same outcomes as inclusive programs?

One of the things that I think really raises questions about this is when we see low income students being placed in segregated programs at higher rates. I think it raises the question is that because the segregated programs are more likely to be in districts with high numbers of low income kids? If you look at rural states or rural school districts, they don't have the capacity to run a segregated program. And as such, that no longer becomes an option for placing a student in that program and they're forced to think about ways to do inclusive education well.

These are all questions that we can ask at the district level, that you can ask at the school level and really think about opportunities to change the way that we provide education for kids with disabilities or kids that just have additional needs because the system has not met them well from their past. And maybe that's a case where it's an inappropriate identification.

Jill Anderson: And what about policy? What's their role in this?

Laura Schifter: Policy has multiple levels and one of the levels that we look at a lot is through federal policy and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and policymakers have tried to address the issue of disproportionality in special education. The way that they have tried to address it is by pushing states to identify districts that have significant disproportionality for identification, placement, and discipline for students of color in special education. One of those regulations are actually just being implemented for the first time more aggressively now.

And so I think we'll have to see how that works out. But when a district is identified with significant disproportionality, the first thing they need to do is review their policies, practices, and procedures, and determine whether that disproportionality is appropriate. And if it's not, then what they need to do is they're required to spend 15% of their funds under IDEA on something called coordinated early intervening services. What that might be in a school district is something like multi-tiered systems of support where you're providing different interventions for kids over time and seeing how they respond to those interventions before referring a kid for special education to try and see if there's a way that we can provide more structure within general education to provide various services for kids before referring for special education.

So that's one of the ways that policy has tried to address it. And I think one of the things that we'll see is when people start talking about what to do next with IDEA, that this issue will come up and there'll be an opportunity to kind of evaluate whether this is the right approach or not.

Jill Anderson: Is there a specific policy recommendation that you would make?

Laura Schifter: So I think that one thing that will be important for IDEA to do is right now we only require that states report data based on special education identification by race and ethnicity, and they are not required to look at it for low income students. And I think that that is one thing that we need to require is that the data be reported out by low income students and that we look at significant disproportionality for low income students as well.

Jill Anderson: Laura Schifter is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She recently published "Racial Differences in Special Education Identification and Placement: Evidence Across Three States" in the Harvard Educational Review. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks so much for listening and please subscribe wherever you like to get your podcasts.

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Harvard EdCast: Racial Differences in Special Education Identification

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Lecturer Laura Schifter - an expert on federal education policy and special education - explains disproportionality and why so many students of color are placed in special education, often in separate classrooms from their peers. While income status is sometimes accepted as the reason behind this phenomenon, Schifter says that doesn't tell the full story.