The disproportionate identification of learning disabilities among certain socio-demographic subgroups, typically groups who are already disadvantaged, is perceived as a persistent problem within the education system. The academic and social experiences of students who are misidentified with a learning disability may be severely restricted, while students with a learning disability who are never identified are less likely to receive the accommodations and modifications necessary to learn at their maximum potential. We use the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to describe national patterns in learning disability identification. Results indicate that socio-demographic characteristics are predictive of identification with a learning disability. While some conventional areas of disproportionality are confirmed (males and language minorities), differences in SES entirely account for African-American and Hispanic disproportionality. Discrepancy between the results of bivariate and multivariate analyses confirms the importance of employing multivariate multilevel models in investigation of disproportionality.

Poorer outcomes for youth labeled with learning disabilities (LDs) are often attributed to the student's own deficiencies or cumulative disadvantage; but the more troubling possibility is that special education placement limits rather than expands these students' opportunities. Labeling theory partially attributes the poorer outcomes of labeled persons to stigma related to labels. This study uses data on approximately 11,740 adolescents and their schools from the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 to determine if stigma influences teachers' and parents' educational expectations for students labeled with LDs and labeled adolescents' expectations for themselves. Supporting the predictions of labeling theory, teachers and parents are more likely to perceive disabilities in, and hold lower educational expectations for labeled adolescents than for similarly achieving and behaving adolescents not labeled with disabilities. The negative effect of being labeled with LDs on adolescents' educational expectations is partially mechanized through parents' and particularly teachers' lower expectations.

Sociologists are using intersectional lenses to examine an increasingly wider range of processes and identities, yet the intersection of race and disability remains a particularly neglected area in sociology. Marking an important step toward filling this gap, the authors interrogate how race and disability have been deployed as analogy in both disability rights activism and in critical race discourse. The authors argue that the “minority model” framework of disability rights has been racialized in ways that center the experiences of white, middle-class disabled Americans, even as this framework leans heavily upon analogic work likening ableism to racial oppression. Conversely, the authors examine the use of disability as metaphor in racial justice discourse, interrogating the historic linking of race and disability that gave rise to these language patterns. The authors argue that this analogic work has marginalized the experiences of disabled people of color and has masked the processes by which whiteness and able-bodiedness have been privileged in these respective movements. Finally, the authors argue that centering the positionality of disabled people of color demands not analogy but intersectional analyses that illuminate how racism and ableism intertwine and interact to generate unique forms of inequality and resistance.

Placement of some students into the courses needed only for high school graduation, and others into those that prepare them for college constitutes academic stratification. This study uses data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to investigate whether students labeled with learning disabilities complete fewer academic courses by the end of high school compared to their peers who are not labeled. Results indicate large disparities in completion of college preparatory coursework, especially in math, science, and foreign language, even net of students’ academic preparation for high school, and their cognitive and noncognitive skills. The evidence supports the possibility that school processes contribute to the poorer course-taking outcomes of students labeled with learning disabilities.