Were Concerns With Misidentification in Special Education Overlooked? In Reply

IN REPLY: We agree with Mr. Lee that misidentification of students as having disabilities requiring special education is an important issue. Although data from national surveys may not always fully describe the health conditions of particular children in special education, these data can provide useful information for assessing trends over time on health conditions that limit activity among children who receive special education services. The aim of our study was to examine trends in specific categories of limitations reported by parents of children who required special education between 2001 and 2012. Although parents could report the conditions in a child’s special education administrative record, they may not have reported those conditions or may have reported additional conditions that were not in the record. Research that links survey data to school records could show how often the reports of parents align with the assessments of school professionals (1).

In regard to Mr. Lee’s additional point about the misidentification of culturally diverse, bilingual, or minority students in special education programs, we acknowledge that it is an interesting research question, but it was not one of the objectives of our study. Other researchers, though, have examined trends in the misidentification of minority students in special education and its possible effect on the representation of minority students in special education programs (2). It may be of interest that a recently published analysis, based on longitudinal data collected from a nationally representative sample of elementary school–aged children, has called into question some of the long-held notions about racial and ethnic disproportionality in special education. Morgan and colleagues (3) found that children from racial and ethnic minority groups were less likely than their white, English-speaking peers to be identified as disabled across all five of the surveyed disability conditions—learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, intellectual disabilities, other health impairments, and emotional disturbances—and were thus less likely to receive potentially beneficial special education services. Although data from national surveys have definite limitations, studies using national data sets can provide information about children receiving special education services that is not available from case studies or small community or school samples.