"Are Schools in the U.S. South Using Special Education to Segregate Students by Race?"

Distinguished Professor George Farkas has published with colleagues from Pennsylvania State University in Exceptional Children.

The title of the article is "Are Schools in the U.S. South Using Special Education to Segregate Students by Race?" 

Co-authors are Paul L. Morgan, Adrienne D. Woods, Yangyang Wang, Marianne M. Hillemeier, and Cynthia Mitchell.

Farkas studies the achievement gap, educational inequality, early childhood, and afterschool programs. Farkas' research has made a major contribution to understanding the school achievement gap for low income and ethnic minority students. Employing a range of statistical approaches and databases to examine the causes and consequences of this gap across varying age groups and educational settings, he was one of the first to show that the gap emerges in early childhood.

Abstract

​Whether students of color are more or less likely to be identified as having disabilities than similarly situated students who are White in U.S. states with histories of de jure and de facto racial segregation is currently unknown. Unadjusted analyses of large samples of students attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. South yielded little evidence of minority overrepresentation in special education. In analyses adjusted for strong confounds (e.g., family income, student-level achievement), students of color were less likely than White students to be identified as having disabilities. Underidentification was evident (a) for the U.S. South in aggregate, (b) across 11 Southern states that we separately examined, (c) in cross-sectional samples assessed in 2003 and 2015, and (d) for specific disability conditions. Black and Hispanic students attending schools in the U.S. South have been and continue to be less likely to be identified as having disabilities than otherwise similar White students.