This study investigated the extent to which the overrepresentation of African American students in more restrictive special education settings is attributable to their overrepresentation in disability categories more likely to be served in more restrictive educational environments. Within 5 disability categories (emotional disturbance, mild mental retardation, moderate mental retardation, learning disabilities, and speech and language), African American students were overrepresented in more restrictive educational environments and underrepresented in less restrictive environments relative to all other students with the same disability. Disproportionality was most evident in those disability categories served primarily in general education settings. Given the social consensus regarding inclusion, disproportionality in restrictiveness of educational environment may represent a more serious challenge than disproportionality in disability categories.

The high degree of overlap of race and poverty in our society has led to the presumption in both research and practice that ethnic disproportionality in special education is in large measure an artifact of the effects of poverty. This article explores relationships among race, poverty, and special education identification to arrive at a more precise estimate of the contribution of poverty to racial disparities. District-level data for all 295 school corporations in a midwestern state were analyzed for this study. Records included information on disability category, general and special education enrollment by race, socioeconomic level, local resources, and academic and social outcomes for 1 school year. Simple correlations among the variables demonstrate that correlations between race and poverty of even moderate strength do not guarantee that the 2 variables will function in the same way with respect to outcome variables, such as identification for special education services. Results of regression analyses indicate that poverty makes a weak and inconsistent contribution to the prediction of disproportionality across a number of disability categories. On the other hand, rates of suspension and expulsion consistently predict district rates of special education disproportionality. Inconsistent relationships between special education disproportionality and achievement may indicate a developmental trend in the systemic contribution to racial disparity. Ideal-type analyses examining race— poverty relationships indicate that where poverty makes any contribution above and beyond race in predicting disability identification, its primary effect is to magnify existing racial disparity.

Conventional wisdom holds that the #MeToo movement increased awareness of sexual harassment and drove sympathizers, particularly women, to increased participation in the 2018 midterm elections. In this paper, we assess whether #MeToo increased awareness of sexual harassment, as well as whether #MeToo increased self-reported interest in various forms of political participation. Using an original dataset from October 2018, we find that although the #MeToo movement increased awareness and concern about sexual harassment and sexual assault, it did not affect interest in political participation among most Americans. We also find that the people most likely to report being aware of and mobilized by the movement were Democrats, those with high levels of political interest, and those who have personally experienced sexual harassment in professional settings. Surprisingly, in most of our models, women were no more likely to report that #MeToo increased their interest in participating than men. The results suggest that the primary effect of #MeToo may have been increasing the salience of sexual harassment and interest in political participation in 2018 among those who possessed the resources to participate and who were ideologically predisposed to support the movement’s goals from the beginning.

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