Seeing Red, Feeling Blue: The Impact of State Political Leaning on State Identification Rates for Emotional Disturbance

Abstract

Investigations of why students with emotional disturbance (ED) are underidentified in special education have often focused on economic factors and problems with the definition of ED. The present study focuses on variation in underidentification across states and its relationship to political ideology. State-level political, economic, and demographic data were obtained from multiple sources, including the National Election Pool exit polls (2008), the U.S. Census Bureau (2010), the National Center for Educational Statistics (2010), the U.S. Department of Education/Office of Special Education Programs (2009), and the National Center for Children in Poverty (2009). The authors conducted a series of regression analyses in which per pupil expenditure, per capita income, percentage child poverty, ethnicity, and conservatism were used to explain state rates of ED identification and state rates of intellectual disability (ID) identification. The resulting model for the identification of ED explained more than 50% of the variance, with conservatism being the strongest predictor (β = -.72, p < .001), whereas per pupil expenditure was nonsignificant. States with higher levels of conservatism had distinctly lower ED identification rates. Conservatism was not a significant factor in state identification of ID. The influence of state political leaning on ED identification and special education for children and youth with ED is discussed.