To examine whether special education racial risk ratios reported by U.S. school districts are explained by district-level confounds, particularly, racial achievement gaps, we analyzed merged data (N = 1,952 districts for Black–White comparisons; N = 2,571 districts for Hispanic–White comparisons) from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, Stanford Educational Data Archive, and Common Core data sets. Regression analysis results indicated that Black– and Hispanic–White district risk ratios were strongly related to Black– and Hispanic–White district achievement gaps. These results reconcile findings from district-level data with those from student-level data and support the finding that, when compared to otherwise similar White students by controlling for group differences in achievement, non-White students are on average underrepresented in special education. That is, non-White overrepresentation in special education in most districts is explained by racial achievement gaps in these districts. Residuals from the regressions provide a more accurate way to monitor for outlier districts than the current practice required in federal regulations of using unadjusted risk ratios.

中文翻译：

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地区级成就差距解释了特殊教育中黑人和西班牙裔人数过多的原因

为了检查美国学区报告的特殊教育种族风险比率是否由地区层面的混杂因素解释，特别是种族成就差距，我们分析了合并数据（黑人 - 白人比较的 N = 1,952 个学区；西班牙裔白人的 N = 2,571 个学区比较）来自美国教育部民权办公室、斯坦福教育数据档案和 Common Core 数据集。回归分析结果表明，黑人和西班牙裔白人区的风险比与黑人和西班牙裔白人区的成就差距密切相关。这些结果将地区级数据的发现与学生级数据的发现相一致，并支持以下发现：与其他相似的白人学生相比，通过控制成绩的群体差异，平均而言，非白人学生在特殊教育中的代表性不足。也就是说，大多数地区的特殊教育中非白人比例过高的原因是这些地区的种族成就差距。与联邦法规中使用未调整风险比率的现行做法相比，回归的残差提供了一种更准确的方法来监控异常地区。