Week 8 - Discussant: Lucas Klotz

Whether students of different ethnicities or socioeconomic status are under or overrepresented in special education is the subject of an active debate in the United States. Answering this question is important because being less likely to enroll in special education might reflect inequalities in access to rights while being more likely to enroll might reflect stigma and discrimination by school staff. Answering this question is, however, hard because student data on both learning disabilities and race/ethnicity is subject to measurement error. This project overcomes this challenge by combining a novel survey instrument to collect student disability data in a representative sample of Brazilian K-12 schools, asking students directly about their visual, auditory, and motor challenges in the classroom, with detailed information on student race -- contrasting self- to school-reported race. It will be first showcasing the differences between administrative data and survey data when it comes to the prevalence of student disabilities in Brazilian K-12 schools. Then, it will be studied the issue of disproportional representation according to both self- and school-reported race. These findings are complemented with an account of school principals' and teachers' responses about the availability and quality of special education offerings in Brazilian schools.