We investigated whether and to what extent minority children attending elementary and middle schools in the U.S. are over- or under-identified as disabled and so disproportionately represented in special education. To address existing limitations in the field's knowledge base, we (a) analyzed multi-year longitudinal data, (b) used hazard modeling to estimate over-time dynamics of disability identification across five specific conditions, and (c) extensively corrected for child-, family-, and school-level potential confounding variables (e.g., child-level academic achievement and behavior, family-level socioeconomic status, school-level state location). Despite long-standing and on-going federal legislative and policy efforts to reduce minority over-representation in special education, our analyses indicated that this has not been occurring in the U.S. Instead, minority children are less likely than otherwise similar White, English-speaking children to be identified as disabled and so receive special education services. From kindergarten entry to at least the end of middle school, racial and ethnic minority children are less likely than otherwise similar White children to be identified as having (a) learning disabilities, (b) speech or language impairments, (c) intellectual disabilities, (d) health impairments, or (d) emotional disturbances. Language minority children are less likely to be identified as having (a) specific learning disabilities or (b) speech or language impairments.

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.