Looking Beyond the Label: Poverty, School Resources, and Disability Identification
Darrick Lamar Bell, CAGS, MAEP
School Psychologist | Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Bell Educational Consulting and Mentoring Services, LLC
October 10, 2026
An evidence-informed reflection for school psychologists and teachers
A recent social media post stopped me in my tracks. Its central argument was that students in schools with limited resources may receive disability labels for difficulties that better-supported schools address through prevention and intervention.
Having worked in both affluent districts and schools serving low-income communities, I recognized the concern immediately. I have seen how access to support can influence the way educators understand and respond to student needs. That experience prompted a closer look at the literature.
The research supports taking this concern seriously. It also requires a more careful conclusion: disability identification is influenced by student needs, family circumstances, school context, and the processes used to connect children with services. Unequal resources can contribute to difficulties and affect identification, but a disability cannot be confirmed or dismissed on the basis of a ZIP code.
What the evidence tells us about income and identification
Schifter et al. (2019) examined student-level administrative data from three states. Students from low-income families were more likely to receive special education services and, once identified, more likely to be educated in substantially separate classrooms. Income differences were especially pronounced for emotional and intellectual disability classifications.
These findings warrant scrutiny. They do not establish that the additional identifications were inappropriate. The study was descriptive, used free or reduced-price lunch eligibility as a proxy for income, and could not determine why the differences occurred. Disproportionality is a reason to investigate the quality of identification and services, rather than a verdict about individual children.
Ainsworth et al. (2025) provide a newer perspective using Oregon education records linked to family income. Their working paper reported special education identification rates of approximately 25% at the lowest income percentile and less than 7% at the highest. For Section 504 plans, the income pattern reversed: students near the top of the income distribution were more likely to receive those supports.
The special education differences also persisted in comparisons of students attending the same school. That finding challenges an explanation based solely on differences between affluent and under-resourced schools. The paper is observational, covers one state, and has not undergone the review accorded official Census Bureau publications. It should inform the discussion without being treated as a national causal estimate (Ainsworth et al., 2025).
Taken together, these studies suggest that reviewing IEP rates alone may overlook meaningful differences in the pathways through which students receive help. A lower special education rate cannot, by itself, demonstrate better prevention or fewer disabilities.
Effective support can change what students exhibit
Prevention is more than a hopeful idea. Bradshaw et al. (2012) studied schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports in a randomized trial involving 37 elementary schools and more than 12,000 students. The intervention improved several behavioral and adjustment outcomes. Students in participating schools were 33% less likely to receive an office discipline referral than students in comparison schools.
This finding supports a central concern raised by the post: changing adult practices and school systems can improve student functioning. However, an office discipline referral is not a special education referral or a disability determination. The trial does not establish that prevention would produce the disability identification percentages presented in the post, and its elementary-school findings should not be assumed to apply identically in high schools.
For practitioners, the implication is to document what support was actually available and implemented. A student's difficulty following expectations has to be understood alongside how clearly those expectations were taught, how accessible the learning task was, and how adults responded.
Context matters, but its influence is not uniform
Hibel et al. (2010) found that students attending elementary schools with higher average academic achievement and behavioral engagement were more likely to receive special education placement after accounting for multiple student, family, and school characteristics. The authors described a contextual effect in which a student's difficulties stand out differently depending on the surrounding student population.
This challenges the assumption that better-performing schools invariably identify fewer children. It also reinforces the need to evaluate students using appropriate criteria and multiple sources of information, rather than relying on how different they appear from classmates.
Poverty and disability can coexist
The statement that schools are identifying inequality rather than disability creates a false choice. Economic hardship can influence actual symptoms as well as how adults interpret them.
Costello et al. (2003) followed 1,420 children in a natural experiment involving an income supplement. Children whose families moved out of poverty showed reductions in conduct and oppositional symptoms toward the levels of children who had never been poor. Anxiety and depression symptoms did not show the same improvement.
The findings support an environmental contribution to some behavioral difficulties, while demonstrating that different difficulties do not respond uniformly to increased income. The study concerned psychiatric symptoms, not IDEA eligibility.
For school teams, the distinction matters. A difficulty can be substantial, environmentally influenced, and present alongside a disability. Its connection to adversity does not make the student's needs less real. Equally, distress, disruptive behavior, or low achievement alone does not establish special education eligibility.
We must also consider students whose needs are missed
The concern about inappropriate identification should be considered alongside underidentification. Soneson et al. (2020), in a systematic review of school-based mental health identification, described unmet needs and examined the feasibility of approaches intended to identify students who might otherwise be missed. The evidence varied considerably, limiting firm conclusions about which identification models were most feasible.
Mental health need is broader than special education eligibility. Nevertheless, this literature reminds us that a low identification rate can reflect missed needs as well as successful support.
An equitable system must attend to inappropriate referrals, incorrect classifications, and students who remain unrecognized. The desired outcome is accurate understanding and effective support, rather than a predetermined identification rate.
Reading the original claim carefully
The supplied post compares emotional/behavioral disability identification rates of 8% and 22%. The excerpt does not identify a study, schools, sample sizes, dates, or denominator. Those figures should not be repeated as established research findings without documentation.
Percentages of all enrolled students, students receiving special education, students referred for evaluation, and students screening positive for behavioral concerns describe different populations. Screening risk, psychiatric diagnosis, and educational eligibility also answer different questions.
Even documented differences between two schools would not demonstrate that otherwise equivalent students received different labels because of resources. That conclusion requires evidence about student needs, selection into schools, assessment practices, and the supports provided.
Questions school psychologists and teachers can use
The following questions are practice recommendations informed by this literature and federal evaluation requirements. They are not a validated checklist or a substitute for an individualized evaluation.
1. What instruction and support has the student actually received? Document access, duration, intensity, consistency, and implementation. Distinguish an intervention that was planned from one that was delivered.
2. Where and when do the difficulties occur? Examine patterns across settings, tasks, relationships, and time. Differences between settings can clarify both student needs and environmental demands.
3. Whose perspectives are included? Bring together student and family input, teacher observations, developmental history, relevant records, and appropriate assessment information.
4. Are we interpreting difference as impairment? Consider language, culture, expectations, and comparison groups. Avoid treating poverty as an individual deficit or using it to explain away a possible disability.
5. What changes when appropriate support is provided? Monitor functioning and progress. Improvement is informative, but does not independently disprove disability.
6. Are we examining all pathways to support? Review IEP and Section 504 patterns alongside referrals, eligibility decisions, discipline, placement, and service access. Use consistent denominators and protect student privacy.
7. Are we protecting timely access to evaluation? Strengthening general education and evaluating a suspected disability can proceed together.
Federal regulations require consideration of multiple information sources when determining eligibility. A child must not be identified under IDEA when the determinant factor is lack of appropriate reading or math instruction or limited English proficiency and the child does not otherwise meet eligibility criteria (Determination of Eligibility, 2026). Federal guidance also makes clear that response to intervention cannot be used to delay or deny evaluation for a suspected disability (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, 2011).
A shared responsibility
My experience across different school communities has left me with a question that deserves continued attention: how much of what we attribute to the student also reflects the conditions in which we expect that student to succeed?
The literature does not justify assuming that disability labels are merely substitutes for poverty. It does justify examining whether students have equitable access to effective instruction, prevention, evaluation, and services.
For school psychologists and teachers, this calls for careful assessment and honest reflection on school capacity. We can recognize a student's disability while challenging inadequate support. We can question an inappropriate classification while taking the student's difficulties seriously. Our responsibility is to understand the child fully and build a response that improves access, participation, and learning.
References
Ainsworth, N. J., Cleveland, C., Clark, L. R., Hibel, J., Brummet, Q., Saultz, A., Penner, E. K., Spiegel, M., Yoo, P. Y., Cristancho, J. C., Hanselman, P., & Penner, A. (2025). School-based disability identification varies by student family income (Working Paper No. CES-25-74). U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies. https://www.census.gov/library/working-papers/2025/adrm/CES-WP-25-74.html
Bradshaw, C. P., Waasdorp, T. E., & Leaf, P. J. (2012). Effects of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports on child behavior problems. Pediatrics, 130(5), e1136–e1145. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-0243
Costello, E. J., Compton, S. N., Keeler, G., & Angold, A. (2003). Relationships between poverty and psychopathology: A natural experiment. JAMA, 290(15), 2023–2029. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.290.15.2023
Determination of eligibility, 34 C.F.R. § 300.306 (2026). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-III/part-300/subpart-D/subject-group-ECFRcdd53b28839f370/section-300.306
Hibel, J., Farkas, G., & Morgan, P. L. (2010). Who is placed into special education? Sociology of Education, 83(4), 312–332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040710383518
Schifter, L. A., Grindal, T., Schwartz, G., & Hehir, T. (2019, January 17). Students from low-income families and special education. The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/report/students-low-income-families-special-education/
Soneson, E., Howarth, E., Ford, T., Humphrey, A., Jones, P. B., Thompson Coon, J., Rogers, M., & Anderson, J. K. (2020). Feasibility of school-based identification of children and adolescents experiencing, or at-risk of developing, mental health difficulties: A systematic review. Prevention Science, 21(5), 581–603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01095-6
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. (2011, January 21). A response to intervention (RTI) process cannot be used to delay-deny an evaluation for eligibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (OSEP Memorandum 11-07). https://sites.ed.gov/idea/idea-files/osep-memo-11-07-response-to-intervention-rti-memo/
About this resource: This focused narrative synthesis draws on selected empirical studies, a systematic review, a descriptive policy report, a working paper, and federal requirements. It is not a systematic review of the full literature. APA 7 author-date citations and references are used; the web presentation is adapted for readability. The opening reflects the author's professional experience. The resource represents Bell Educational Consulting and Mentoring Services, LLC and does not speak for a school district.
