Panel:
Identifying Students with Special Needs
(Education)
Thursday, November 3, 2016: 10:00 AM-11:30 AM
Columbia 3 (Washington Hilton)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: Scott Imberman, Michigan State University
Panel Chairs: Scott Imberman, Michigan State University
Discussants: Amy Ellen Schwartz, Syracuse University and Claudia Persico, University of Wisconsin - Madison
In order for students with disabilities or gifted students to acquire specialized resources in school they must go through an identification process. These processes are often subjective which leads to substantial socio-economic inequality in the effectiveness of these processes. In order to address these gaps we need to understand the processes that drive the incidence of special needs, explain the factors that lead to inequities, and assess policies that seek to correct these. This panel will touch on all these issues through a set of three papers. The first tries to explain part of the increasing incidence of autism spectrum disorders by assessing the role played to which assortative mating. The second paper examines how racial and economic gaps in special education identification evolve and what explains these gaps. The third looks at how providing a universal identification system could help increase minority representation in gifted and talented programs.
