Which Students With Disabilities are Placed Primarily Outside of U.S. Elementary School General Education Classrooms?

Students with disabilities (SWD) who are Black or Hispanic have been reported to be more likely to be placed primarily outside of general education classrooms while attending U.S. schools. Federal law and regulation require monitoring of special education placement based on race or ethnicity. Yet, whether and to what extent racial or ethnic disparities in placement are explained by bias or by other explanatory factors is currently unclear. We evaluated for racial and ethnic bias in special education placement by analyzing longitudinal data from two independent samples of SWD (N values range 590–1,130) attending U.S. elementary schools. We statistically controlled for plausibly exogenous sociodemographic, academic, and behavioral risk factors measured in kindergarten in analyses of the students as they attended first, third, and fifth grades between the 1999–2000 and 2015–2016 school years. Of the resulting 12 Black or Hispanic grade-year–specific tests, 11 (i.e., 92%) indicated that controls for kindergarten explanatory factors—particularly significant academic difficulties—fully explained the risk initially attributable to race or ethnicity. We observed little evidence that bias explains racial or ethnic disparities in special education placement in U.S. elementary schools.