Joao M. Souto-Maior

A Critical Appraisal of the Evidence on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education

Rachel E. Fish, Kenneth A. Shores, Joao M. Souto-Maior. June 2025

Topics: Methods

Tags: Race, ethnicity, and education, Students with disabilities

This essay provides a two-pronged critical assessment of a subset of the literature on racial disproportionality in special education: that which aims to estimate racial disparities among otherwise similar children. This body of research has shown that Black students are less likely than… more →
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The Correlated Proxy Problem: Why Control Variables can Obscure the Contribution of Selection Processes to Group-Level Inequality

Joao M. Souto-Maior, Kenneth A. Shores, Rachel E. Fish. January 2025

Topics: Methods

Tags: Leadership, Race, ethnicity, and education, Students with disabilities

Whether selection processes contribute to group-level disparities or merely reflect pre-existing inequalities is an important societal question. In the context of observational data, researchers, concerned about omitted-variable bias, assess selection-contributing inequality via a kitchen-sink… more →
Download 01/2025