Placing Children in Special Education A Strategy for Equity (1982) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Patterns in Special Education Placement as Revealed by the OCR Surveys
Patterns in Special Education Placement as Revealed by the OCR Surveys
Pages 322-381
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 322... ...
It is clear that the placement rates in special education programs are very different both for minority and white students and for males and females. Table 1 gives nationwide percentages of students in each of five special programs.
|
From page 323... ...
Differences between minority and nonminor~ty students in EMR placements are described, and the examination is specified by separate racial or ethnic classifications and by special education programs other than EMR programs. THE 1978 OC R S U RVEY In its 1978 Elementary and Secondary School Civil Rights Survey, OCR sampled approximately 6,000 school districts, or about one third of the districts in the United States.
|
From page 325... ...
The term includes children who are schizophrenic or autistic. The term does not include children who are socially maladjusted, unless it is determined that they are seriously emotionally disturbed.
|
From page 326... ...
326 TABLE 2 Districts Sampled and Responding to Question on EMR Programs FINN Approximate Number Percentage of DistrictsNumber with EMR Statein State* Sampled Programs Alabama125125 100.0 Alaska5022 100.0 Arizona22381 96.3 Arkansas348237 94.9 California1,022326 66.6 Colorado11758 91.4 Connecticut16274 90.5 Delaware2412 100.0 District of Columbia11 100.0 Florida6767 100.0 Georgia183187 99.5 Hawaii11 100.0 Idaho11142 95.2 Illinois958320 68.8 Indiana280123 91.9 Iowa389138 60.9 Kansas301105 79.0 Kentucky159108 95.4 Louisiana6666 100.0 Maine17272 93.1 Maryland2521 100.0 Massachusetts336126 47.6 Michigan565202 88.1 Minnesota405142 81.0 Mississippi150150 98.7 Missouri419197 95.4 Montana52162 82.3 Nebraska99666 92.4 Nevada179 100.0 New Hampshire14243 93.0 New Jersey556197 75.1 New Mexico8851 94.1 New York716263 62.0 North Carolina144145 100.0 North Dakota28753 62.3 Ohio566245 92.2 Oklahoma596193 92.7 Oregon32764 87.5 Pennsylvania479317 83.3 Rhode Island3927 88.9 South Carolina929.2 100.0 South Dakota17458 63.8
|
From page 327... ...
Elsewhere the number of districts in a state varies immensely, as do the ways in which districts are defined. A number of states that are predominantly rural have many small districtse.g., Nebraska, which has a large number of one-school districts a situation that creates unique problems both for the organization of special education programs and for studying enrollment patterns.
|
From page 328... ...
The basic element in the index is the "odds" of being assigned to a particular special education category. For example, a measurement of the odds of a minority student's being assigned to an EMR class is the percentage of minority students who are classified as EMR divided by the percentage of minorities who are not in special programs.
|
From page 329... ...
The disproportions in programs for the trainable mentally retarded and for emotionally disturbed children are also due in large part to the disproportionate representation of blacks in these classifications. At the same time, for Hispanic students the second largest minority group placement rates in EMR, TMR, and SED programs are very close to those for non-Hispanic whites on a nationwide basis.
|
From page 330... ...
330 = _ = O ~ ~ ~ ~ ~O for ° == .- ret O ~ ~ ~ O ~ ~_ o o O ~ CN ~ ~ O ~ ~Cq so ct ret ~ ~ up ~ oO .O ~ ~ret 0 0 ~ _ Is ~1 .
|
From page 331... ...
districts maintain other special programs, including those for trainable mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, or specific learning-disabled students, about one third of the districts having no EMR programs do not operate any of these other programs. Thus, there are essentially two populations of school districts represented in the survey data those with and those without EMR programs.
|
From page 332... ...
The method of "iterative The proportion of the nation's school districts having no EMR programs may be larger than the OCR's 1978 survey indicates. In 1976, OCR surveyed all districts in the country, and approximately 45 percent reported no EMR enrollment.
|
From page 333... ...
12.7 14.7 2.1 to 2.5 5.1 6.7 4.2 4.9 4.4 5.1 2.6 to 3.0 2.2 3.8 2.2 1.5 0.2 0.5 3.1 to 3.5 1.0 1.7 1.0 0.4 0.2 3.6 to 4.0 0.5 1.3 0.3 0.1 - 4.1 to 4.5 0.3 0.7 0.3 0.1 - 4.6 to 5.0 0.2 0.4 0.0 - - 5.1 to 5.5 0.2 0.8 0.1 - - 5.6 to 6.0 0.1 0.3 0.2 - - 6.1 to 6.5 0.2 0.4 0.2 - - 6.6 to 7.0 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 - 7.1 and above 0.1 0.3 0.1 Number of districts in sample 4,917 1,074 1,785 1,507 418 133 Mean 0.42 0.37 0.25 0.59 0.77 1.02 Standard deviation 1.55 1.88 1.57 1.25 0.83 0.67 NOTE: Projections are weighted to nationwide percentages; weights are the inverse of sampling probabilities.
|
From page 334... ...
The average percentage of minority students in EMR classes exceeds Tithe criterion used to identify small districts for this analysis was any district having fewer than 100 minority students enrolled or fewer than 100 whites enrolled.
|
From page 337... ...
337 ~ ~ cry ~ ret O 00 ~ O ~ Cal ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 00 - ~ - - - ~ ~ - ret - - - - - 0 ~ ~ ret - - .
|
From page 338... ...
With the exception of Utah, all of these states have more than 25 percent minority enrollment and are located in or near the South. While the high minority enrollment implies that relatively large numbers of minority students attend school in most parts of a state, it does not imply that the EMR disproportion is necessarily as high everywhere.
|
From page 339... ...
The rank-order correlation between these and the rankings by sex disproportion is +.42;9 there is a moderate trend for states that have the largest disproportionate assignment of minorities to EMR classes also to have the largest relative proportion of males in them. At the district level the disproportion index for race was correlated with the index for sex separately within each of the five geographic regions, for each of three district size categories (fewer than 1,000 students; 1,000-9,999 students; and 10,000 or more students)
|
From page 340... ...
The percentages from Table 5 are summarized by regions in Table 6 for 31 states with more than 10 percent minority enrollment.~° The five geographic regions are relatively homogeneous in the minimum and maximum average placement rates for whites, although the low EMR rate for whites in the West does stand out from the other regions. By comparison, there are dramatic differences in both minimum and maximum values for minorities.
|
From page 341... ...
. On a regional basis the evidence suggests that larger differences between minority and white EMR placements occur in areas where the percentage of children both minority and white who are placed in EMR classes is high.
|
From page 342... ...
(Table 4 provides more detail.) Except for the smallest districts the average disproportion increases with district size.
|
From page 343... ...
The interaction of region and percent minority is also statistically TABLE 8 Mean Log-Odds Index for Districts by Percentage of Minority Enrollment Percentage of Minority Enrollment District Size 0 to 10 10 to 30 30 to 50 50 to 70 70 to 90 90 to 100 Fewer than 1,000 students-0.07 1.21 1.48 1.12 1.52 4.17 1,000 to 2,999 students-0.09 1.24 1.37 1.35 0.98 2.03 3,000 to 9,999 students0.32 1.15 1.41 1.29 0.82 0.01 10,000 to 29,999 students0.58 1.15 1.11 0.99 0.59 0.06 30,000 or more students1.13 1.34 1.00 0.97 0.66 - 0.02 NOTE: Percentages are the weighted projections to nationwide values; weights are the inverse of sampling probabilities.
|
From page 344... ...
344 1 1 1 1 gV~ ° ~g - ~o o ~ ~A\ Z en // lo lo _ _ O O _ O O ~ LLI o A: z lo so ID _ O LL z LL tar: LU O LD hi _ X3ONI SCGO-DO1 NV3W ._ V' C)
|
From page 345... ...
The disproportion curve for the largest districts yields a significant linear effect, indicating that it is statistically indistinguishable from a monotonically decreasing pattern of means. The average disproportion for large districts is more than 1.1 when the proportion of minority students is 10 percent or less, increases slightly for districts with 10-30 percent minority enrollment, and decreases and approaches zero as the minority enrollment increases to 90-100 percent.
|
From page 346... ...
The correlations of SES with EMR disproportions by race/ethnicity are given in Table 9. The association is significantly negative for all districts combined (r = - .20)
|
From page 347... ...
The lower SES districts within this group are the same districts that have 60 percent or more minority enrollment as well as EMR rates for minorities that are close to those for whites. The higher SES districts in this group tend to have more part-time EMR placements (see the section below on time spent in EMR classes)
|
From page 348... ...
In lower SES communities, both the program size and racial difference are larger. The association of SES with EMR disproportion, however, is mediated by a number of additional factors and even contradicted in some subsets of school districts.~5 Minority enrollment a significant concomitant of SES has a strong but complex relationship to disproportion as well.
|
From page 349... ...
349 + .o ~o.= , <: 5 au X LU ~ 04 Ct s~ _, ~: C~ 5 CJ X Ct au V]
|
From page 352... ...
It is not possible to interpret these differences as arising from the desegregation order in any case since the EMR disproportion may have preceded the order in time and may even have prompted the court's intervention. Other measures may be derived from the OCR survey data to reflect the minority-white imbalance in individual schools.
|
From page 353... ...
To the extent that EMR disproportion and racial imbalance are related, the association is negative. That is, districts with larger EMR disproportions are those in which the racial composition of the schools is more nearly balanced; those with racial imbalances tend to have more similar EMR rates for whites and minorities.
|
From page 355... ...
The correlations of suspensions with EMR disproportion are given in Table 13. Among small school districts and the very largest, there is no association of suspensions with disproportion in EMR placements.
|
From page 356... ...
Among large districts, those with the greatest disproportions tend have less than 50 percent minority enrollment (see Table 81. In these set ~8The same pattern is obtained for each geographic region except the West, where EMR disproportion is not related to either suspension index.
|
From page 357... ...
DISPROPORTION IN OTHER SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS The average proportions of minority and white children assigned to four special programs other than EMR are listed by state in Table 15. Of the 5,486 districts in the sample with one or more special programs and with both minority and white students enrolled, 4,917 (90 percent)
|
From page 359... ...
359 c~ ~ ~ _ I_ ~ c~ r~ oo ~ oO ~ ~ ~ ° °° oo ~ r~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ Oo ~ ~ - _ ~ .
|
From page 361... ...
SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITIES Classes for those labeled SLD have the greatest proportion of students on a national basis of all special education programs. The nationwide rate is 2.31 percent for all students and the same for white students and varies from 1.27 percent of Asian or Pacific Island students to 3.49 percent of American Indian or Alaskan native students.
|
From page 362... ...
Disproportion varies from district to district and from region to region and depends on specific demographic characteris TABLE 16 Direction of Minority-White Difference in Test for Disproportions in Specific Learning Disabilities District Size 10,000 or 1 to 999 1,000 to 9,999 More Region Students Students Students Northeast Border South Midwest West Negative Negative Positive Positive Negative Negative Positive NOTE: Only results significant at p < .01 are shown. '9These were l-tests for Ho:,u = 0.
|
From page 363... ...
EMR DISPROPORTION IN SEPARATE RACIAL OR ETHNIC GROUPS Table 17 lists the average percentage of students in EMR programs and the average log-odds index for each minority group identified by the OCR 20Tests of the mean difference in specific learning disability and EMR disproportions revealed a significant difference in every region of the country.
|
From page 365... ...
365 rat to 1 U)
|
From page 367... ...
On a nationwide basis the proportion of Hispanic students in EMR classes is slightly below that for nonminorities and well below that of blacks. However, the average percentage of Hispanic students in EMR classes exceeds that of nonminority students in 26 of the 31 individual states.
|
From page 368... ...
On a nationwide basis the average district provides bilingual classes for about 12 percent of its Hispanic enrollment; however, the larger districts in the Northeast have consistently greater portions of Hispanic students in bilingual education. The distribution of EMR disproportion is summarized in Table 19.
|
From page 369... ...
The difference for large districts is statistically significant when p < .01; furthermore, the difference does not interact significantly with Hispanic enrollment or with geographic region in any district size interval. Thus, there is a trend among large school districts and only among large districts for the relative proportion of Hispanic students in EMR classes to decline as the black enrollment increases; at the extreme, when the black enrollment exceeds 75 percent, substantially fewer Hispanic than nonminority students are classified as EMR.
|
From page 372... ...
At the same time the largest districts have the lowest EMR disproportion for Hispanic students (see Table 19~. To explore the relationship of bilingual education with EMR placements further, districts in each of four size intervals were classified by geographic region and by the extent of EMR disproportion for Hispanic students.
|
From page 373... ...
It does not appear that SLD placements substitute for EMR placements, since a few states have high average disproportions in both classifications simultaneously (New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming. In fact, the correlation of SLD with EMR disproportion among Hispanic students is Hit is important to recall that these data represent only the 1978-1979 school year.
|
From page 374... ...
In summary, the apparently similar EMR placement rates for Hispanic and nonminority students disguise enormous variation in practices among school districts. There are a number of districts in which Hispanic students are assigned to EMR programs in large proportions.
|
From page 375... ...
For this group in particular, however, the OCR survey may not tell the complete story, since numerous American Indians are enrolled in special schools and special programs that are not represented in the usual public school sample. ASIAN OR PACIFIC ISLANDERS Students who are of Asian or Pacific Island origins are assigned to EMR programs at rates considerably below those of whites in 10 of the 12 states in which they comprise more than 1 percent of the school enrollment.
|
From page 376... ...
DISPROPORTION AND STATE EMR CRITERIA To determine the extent to which state guidelines are associated with disproportion, information was obtained for 37 states on whether adaptive behavior assessments are required for EMR classification and the maximum IQ score a child may have and still be labeled EMR. The states were classified by region and by whether adaptive behavior assessments were 23The correlation of socioeconomic status with the proportion of all students in EMR programs for the total sample is-.3l, suggesting support for this three-variable hypothesis.
|
From page 377... ...
The results are summarized in Table 23. There is no statistically significant difference between states that require and those that do not require adaptive behavior assessment for EMR placement on any of the measures listed, including average IQ cutoff score, average size of the states' EMR programs (in terms of percent TABLE 23 Comparison of States Requiring and Not Requiring Adaptive Behavior (AB)
|
From page 378... ...
That is, on the average, the lower the IQ cutoff score i.e., the more stringent the EMR criteria the greater is the relative assignment of minority students to EMR classes. This is predictable for states in which adaptive behavior assessments are not made regularly, since EMR placements become more nearly a function of children's IQ scores.
|
From page 379... ...
Land Economics 52:278-298. APPENDIX EXAMPLES OF SMOOTHING DATA FOR SMALL DISTRICTS The 1978 OCR survey indicates 11 districts in Georgia with fewer than 100 minority students enrolled or fewer than 100 whites.
|
From page 380... ...
A partial answer may be provided by examining the larger statewide data set, in which the odds for whites is small but is nonzero (0.0150~. Smoothing the district's frequencies yields the following results: Minority White EMR No special program 20.9588 0.0079 193.6464 65.3870 The odds for minorities is 0.1082, for whites 0.0001, and the difference is 0.1081, which is close to the original value.,~While the original zero value did not allow calculation of the log-odds index, the adjusted values yield In (0.1082)
|
From page 381... ...
Patterns in Placement as Revealed by the OCR Surveys 381 The smoothing procedure used in this analysis involves obtaining "pseudo Bayes estimates" of actual population frequencies in the manner described by Bishop et al. (1975: Section 12.1.1~.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.