Abstract
Their work explains an understanding on how legal compliance to federal
disability legislation is related to racial/ethnic disprorportionality. The study
relies on sociological organizational theory and uses a neoinstit utional lens to
understand the relationship between formal legal compliance and symbolic
compliance when mediating disproportionality. The study is quantitative with
the unit of analysis at the district level. It uses event history analysis to
understand how a federal and state level citation for disporportionality, and the
acts of compliance that follow form the citation, are related to the probability of
the occurrence of a future citation. The goal of the inquiry is to u nderstand how
district sociodemographics in conjunction with compliance to disability
legislation may exacerbate, neutralize, or mediate disproportionate outcomes.
Preliminary findings indicate that there is a complex relationship between the
poverty level of a district, the percentage of non -white students enrolled, and
previous year’s compliance, yielding evidence that compliance to disability
legislationdoes not ensure that disparate outcomes are eliminated. The study
highlights limitations in the legal structure of disability legislation when
addressing racial/ethnic disproportionality in the United States.