U.S. Ninth Graders’ Math Course Placement at the Intersection of Learning Disability Status, Race, and Socioeconomic Status

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Study examining how learning disability status, race, and socioeconomic status (SES) jointly shape ninth-grade math course placement using data on 15,000 U.S. students from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. Findings show a learning disability is more strongly associated with lower placement for youth who are more privileged by race and/or SES (increased liability), while adjusted models attribute lower placements to cumulative disadvantage rather than transition inequities. The work advances intersectional approaches and guides future research.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Study design and analytic approach

Key findings and implications

AERA Open January-December 2023, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–24 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584231186612 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2023. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) U.S. Ninth Graders’ Math Course Placement at the Intersection of Learning Disability Status, Race, and Socioeconomic Status Dara Shifrer Portland State University This study integrates an intersectional framework with data on 15,000 U.S. ninth graders from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to investigate differences in ninth-grade math course placement at the intersection of adolescents’ learning disability status, race, and socioeconomic status (SES). Descriptive results support an increased liability perspective, with the negative relationship between a learning disability and math course placement larger for adolescents more privileged in terms of their race and/or SES. Adjusted results suggest that the lower math course placements of youth with learning disabilities are due to cumulative disadvantage rather than disability-related inequities in the transition to high school for youth of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition to demonstrating the importance of intersectional perspectives, this study provides a roadmap for future studies by introducing the new perspective of increased liability to be used in conjunction with the widely employed perspective of multiple marginalization. Keywords: disability, disability studies, intersectional theory, intersectionality, math, mathematics education, quasi-experimental analysis, race, regression analyses, social class, socioeconomic status Introduction Learning disabilities are the most prevalent disability among K–12 youth, composing around half of the special education population (McFarland et al., 2019). The learning disability classification is used for youth who struggle, despite an average or high IQ, with reading (dyslexia), numeric calculation (dyscalculia), and/or writing (dysgraphia) (Fletcher et al., 2005) . Intersectionality prioritizes consideration of individuals’“multiple social locations”(Collins, 2002) . Youth classified with learning disabilities are disproportionately Black (Office of Special Education Programs, 2018), and sometimes disproportionately Latinx, depending on the context (Klingner & Harry, 2006; Samson & Lesaux, 2009). Asian youth are underrepresented among youth with reported learning disabilities (Office of Special Education Programs, 2018). The population of youth classified with learning disabilities also has a much lower average socioeconomic status (SES) than that of the larger population (Shifrer, 2018; Zablotsky & Alford, 2020) . Disability, race, and SES intersect closely in the United States, but we lack a real understanding of how that intersection looks in relation to important life course benchmarks (Maroto et al., 2019; Naples et al., 2019) . Math course attainment by the end of high school has implications not only for educational and occupational outcomes in young adulthood but even for financial and health outcomes in later life (Carroll et al., 2017; Long et al., 2012; Woods et al., 2018) . Adolescents’ eighth- and ninth-grade math course placements link closely to their math outcomes at the end of high school (Roderick et al., 2014). Understanding how certain status markers operate differently depending on a person’s position along other axes of stratification is a primary aim of intersectional approaches (Hancock, 2007), with the dominant expectation being that persons with multiple marginalizing statuses experience the poorest outcomes (Choo & Ferree, 2010; Collins, 2015) . I used data on around 15,000 U. S. adolescents from the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS) to, first, investigate whether unadjusted estimates of ninth gr

FAQs

What data and population does the study use?

The study analyzes data on about 15,000 U.S. ninth graders from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS).

How does learning disability status relate to ninth-grade math course placement?

Unadjusted and descriptive results show the negative relationship between learning disability and placement is larger for students who are more privileged in terms of race and/or SES (increased liability).

Why are lower placements for youth with learning disabilities observed after adjustments?

Adjusted results suggest the differences reflect cumulative disadvantage rather than disability-related inequities in the transition to high school across diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam