Abstract
Disproportionality remains a difficult and persistent problem in education, particularly in special education. In this chapter, I describe critical features of the statistical calculations for disproportionality and highlight some of the methodological issues that continue to challenge both the calculation and interpretation of disproportionality. The metric used to describe the phenomenon is a critical choice, particularly if the goal is to compare two or more groups. However, as described in this chapter, not all can be aggregated in a rigorous way, leading some researchers to focus on risk ratios as they have a known variance and can be aggregated using a weighted statistical modeling approach. Other issues discussed include minimum cell size decisions and the comparison group used.
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Gage, N. (2022). Methodological Issues and Debates in the Study of Disproportionality in Education. In: Gage, N., Rapa, L.J., Whitford, D.K., Katsiyannis, A. (eds) Disproportionality and Social Justice in Education. Springer Series on Child and Family Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13775-4_4
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