Differences across Schools in Otherwise Similar Students’ Likelihood of Placement into Special Education

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Special Education

Abstract

Placement into special education may offer costs as well as benefits. The majority of students qualify for special education services on the basis of subjective and socially rooted diagnostic criteria. With economically disadvantaged and racial minority youth disproportionately placed into special education, special education may serve to reproduce social disadvantage. Researchers have only recently been able to use student rather than aggregate level predictors to understand differences in students’ likelihoods of categorization with a disability, but school level differences in risk of placement into special education remain less well understood. Moreover, the national averages identified in these studies may not be evident in large urban minority-majority school districts like the district of interest in this study. This study uses longitudinal data from 2006-07 through 2012-13 describing a census of the students and schools in the district to investigate: 1) What characteristics of schools differentiate third graders’ likelihood of disability categorization, net of students’ own characteristics?, and 2) Do school level associations vary depending on students’ characteristics or disability category? This study contributes to the literatures focused on educational stratification, educational disabilities, the sociology of diagnosis, health disparities, and labeling.

Authors

• Dara Renee Shifrer, Rice University

• Rachel Elizabeth Fish, University of Wisconsin-Madison