Using the risk ratio to assess racial/ethnic disproportionality in special education at the school-district level.(Report)

The issue of the disproportionate identification and placement of racial/ethnic minorities in special education has been investigated extensively. One of the most useful tools in this research is the risk ratio, which compares one racial/ethnic group's risk of receiving special education and related services to that of all other students. The risk ratio can be used to calculate disproportionality at both the state and school-district levels. However, analysts often encounter difficulties in applying the risk ratio to districtlevel data due to variable demographic distributions and small numbers of students in either the racial/ ethnic group or the comparison group. We propose two modifications to the risk ratio for dealing with these problems.

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Racial/ethnic disproportionality in special education has been an issue of concern for more than 30 years. This issue was first brought to the forefront by Dunn (1968), who noted that approximately 60% to 80% of the students being taught by teachers in mild mental retardation classes that year were minority students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Since that time, research examining disproportionality has consistently found that some racial/ethnic minorities are overrepresented in special education, while others are underrepresented (e.g., Heller, Holtzman, & Messick, 1982; Losen & Orfield, 2002; National Research Council, 2002). Specifically, Black students tend to be overrepresented in the mental retardation (MR) and emotional disturbance (ED) disability categories. Moreover, the overrepresentation is not isolated to a handful of states, but is widespread in many states across the country (Westat, 2003). In addition, there tends to be widespread under-representation of Asian/Pacific Islander students at the state level in many of the disability categories.

The disproportionate representation of certain racial/ethnic groups in special education is problematic for several reasons. Overrepresentation suggests that assessment procedures are not applied equally to all racial/ethnic groups, leading to some groups being inappropriately identified for special education (Heller et al., 1982). Furthermore, there are concerns about the detrimental effects of labeling and the tendency for certain racial/ethnic groups, specifically Black students, to be placed in more restrictive special education environments than those in which their peers are placed (Serwatka, Deering, & Grant, 1995). Underrepresentation is problematic when certain racial/ ethnic groups are not being identified for special education and therefore are not receiving the services they need to help them achieve positive educational outcomes. Hence, both forms of disproportionality--overrepresentation and underrepresentation--suggest the likelihood that the educational needs of children of affected racial and ethnic backgrounds are not being met.

As a step toward ensuring that all students, regardless of race/ethnicity, receive an appropriate education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEIA) requires that states

 
   provide for the collection and examination of data 
   to determine if significant disproportionality is occurring 
   within the State and the local educational 
   agencies of the State with respect to the identification 
   of children as children with disabilities ... and 
   the placement in particular educational settings of 
   such children. (20 U.S.C. [section] 1418(d)(1)) 

Although IDEIA 2004 instructs states to collect and analyze both state- and district-level disproportionality data, it does not instruct them on how to analyze these data.