The effect of race, gender, and economic status on the placement in special education high-incidence programs.

This study included all 4,537 of the educable mentally impaired (EMI), emotionally impaired (EI), and learning disabled (LD) students from eight urban districts who were in grades 1 through 6 and received a minimum of 10% of their schooling in special education. Black students were found to be overrepresented and White students were found to be underrepresented in EMI. White students were found to be overrepresented in EI, while this was the only classification where Black students were underrepresented. In the LD classification the overrepresentation of Hispanics was the only occurrence of disproportionate representation. All disability categories had a higher representation of low-economic students than occurred in regular education, with EMI having the largest percentage and LD the lowest. The overrepresentation of Black students in EMI is attributed to the high percentage of low-economic students in that category. Non-low-economic Black students were underrepresented while non-low-economic White students were overrepresented in all three disability categories. Eighty percent of the EI students, 70% of the LD students, and 55% of the EMI students were male. Gender was not significant in studying either race or economic status. The writer determined whether students were served in special education 10% to 50%, 51% to 99%, or full time. The majority of EMI students (57.2%) were served full time in special education, while only 6.6% were in special education less than half time. Almost half of the EI students (48.1%) spent their entire day in special education, with the remainder divided almost equally between the other time frames. Fifty-nine percent of the LD students spent most of their time in regular education, and 19% were in special education full time. Gender did not affect the amount of time that was spent in special education. Students who were of low-economic status were found to spend more time in special education.Doctor of Education (EdD)Elementary educationSpecial educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161759/1/8812845.pd