Using the Risk Ratio to Assess Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality in Special Education at the School-District Level

Abstract

The issue of the disproportionate identification and placement of racial/ethnic minorities in special education has been investigated extensively. One of the most useful tools in this research is the risk ratio, which compares one racial/ethnic group's risk of receiving special education and related services to that of all other students. The risk ratio can be used to calculate disproportionality at both the state and school-district levels. However, analysts often encounter difficulties in applying the risk ratio to district-level data due to variable demographic distributions and small numbers of students in either the racial/ ethnic group or the comparison group. We propose two modifications to the risk ratio for dealing with these problems.

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