Deepening the Study of Disproportionality in Special Education: A Contextual Analysis Within Suburban School Districts

Abstract

Despite a policy framework aiming to provide equal opportunity and high-quality educational services, racially disparate outcomes persist within education. Under the Individual with Disabilities Education Act, states are mandated to identify and cite districts with “significant disproportionality” in special education. Notwithstanding policy, school districts continue to receive citations for disproportionality. We explored how district-level contextual variables related to the likelihood of a legal citation for racial disproportionality in special education among suburban districts, and how these factors covary with changes in citation status. Building on extant research on racial composition, we used discrete-time event history analysis methodology (EHA) to specifically examine how district-level racial segregation, measured with the dissimilarity index, related to the experience of a citation during the 2004–2005 to 2011–2012 school years. The results indicate that districts with higher Black–White segregation levels were far more likely to be cited. The findings suggest that national data obscure the actual situated, localized patterns of racial disproportionality.