Parental Etiological Explanations and Disproportionate Racial/Ethnic Representation in Special Education Services for Youths with Emotional Disturbance

Although there has long been concern about underidentification or misidentification of children with emotional or behavioral disorders in special education, recent attention has also been focused on disproportionate racial and ethnic representation of children in the school category of emotional disturbance (ED). There is evidence that African American children may be overidentified in the ED category while Asian and Hispanic children may be underidentified, although these findings are not consistent from sample to sample. In this study the authors examined parental beliefs about the causes of their child's problems as a potential partial mediator between race or ethnicity and special education identification for emotional disturbance. The sample of 1,019 children was drawn from a larger study of at-risk youths who were active in at least one of five public sectors of care. In this sample, parental explanatory etiologies relating to personality and relational issues were found to account for part of the racial or ethnic differences in ED service use for Latino and Asian American/Pacific Islander children.