Abstract
About two million children with disabilities had limited access to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment before Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. Additionally, to meet the needs of children with learning disabilities the law required the use of a Discrepancy Model (DM). This model involved a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability (IQ) and academic achievement for children to receive special education services under the Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) category. With the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004, the law no longer required the use of the DM. However, special education practitioners continue applying the DM as part of the eligibility requirement. Furthermore, over the years empirical research has demonstrated that DM is not an indicator of SLDs. Thus, the continuous application of the DM for eligibility creates an issue in special education that needs to be addressed. Therefore, this mixed methods explanatory action research study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the practices of special education practitioners in a school district in the greater Sacramento area. This research pursued to find if there was a significant statistical relationship between DM and race, and DM and linguistic background as well as any possible equity issues surrounding this practice. The results from content analysis of 307 IEP documents and interviews to special education practitioners provided information that with the application of a Pearson Test of Independence through a Statistical Package for Social Science program (SPSS) indicated no statistically significant relationship between race and DM. Thus, based on these results any child could be qualified using the discrepancy model (DM) regardless of their race. However, with the use of the same method, a statistical relationship was found between language and DM. In other words, in this district a higher number of children whose English was their primary language were qualified under SLDs. Therefore, practitioners in this district made equitable and informed decisions regardless of the student’s racial or language backgrounds. The special education practitioners participating in this study followed recommendations from their district to apply the DM as their method for eligibility, however, they were aware of the flaws of the DM and gathered information from various sources to make informed decisions.