Transition from elementary to middle or junior high schools has been associated with slowed reading and mathematics achievement for students in general education as well as students with disabilities. Little is known about how this transition affects students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), or emotional/behavioral disturbance (EBD). Reading and math scores from state achievement tests used for federal accountability reporting were analyzed from 125,646 Oregon students between 2006 and 2013. About half were female, about half qualified for free or reduced price lunch, and about 34% identified as an ethnic or racial minority. Piecewise longitudinal growth models were analyzed using hierarchical linear and nonlinear modeling, separately for reading and math achievement. Scores for all students, on average, rose slightly faster before transition than after transition. Students who experienced a school transition in Grade 6 were more negatively impacted than those who transitioned in Grade 7, while students who stayed in the same school from Grade 3 to 8 experienced the least impact. Initial scores in reading and math for students with ASD were lower than students without disabilities; students with EBD were lower still, and students with TBI had the lowest. Before transition, students with ASD and EBD accelerated faster in reading than students without disabilities whereas in math, students with ASD or EBD showed improved scores immediately after transition. Students with EBD maintained post-transition trajectories similar to students without disabilities. Students with EBD had the most pronounced deceleration in reading scores after the transition whereas students with TBI had the most deceleration in math.

Historically, Hispanic/Latino (H/L) students have been under-referred, under-identified, and under-served by the U.S. Special Education (SPED) system, particularly under the emotional behavioral disturbance (EBD) category. This finding is alarming given that numerous federal sources report that H/L students continue a disturbing trend of struggling academically as well as being at a higher risk for poor mental health outcomes such as elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidality when compared to their peers. Unfortunately, the existing mental health and education literature on H/L students provides limited guidance in understanding the disproportionate underrepresentation of H/L in the EBD category of the SPED system; an underrepresentation well-documented in the report to congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA). Using survey methods, the purpose of this study was to shed light on the possible mediating role teachers' perceptions have on the SPED referral and identification decisions by looking at teacher ratings of risk for EBD-like behaviors of students across behavioral conditions (i.e., internalizing versus externalizing types of behaviors) and across ethnic/racial groups (i.e., White, African Americans, and H/L students) using a response-to-intervention framework. Using the Qualtrics software, an online survey tool, 114 self-selected pre-service teachers were surveyed; data was collected and analyzed using a One-way Analysis of Variance. Two main effects and two interaction effects were explored: does the students' ethnic/racial background moderate the teachers' at risk score (ARS) regardless of the behavior displayed?; does the type of behavioral expression moderate the ARS regardless of ethnic/race?; is there an interaction effect between H/L students exhibiting internalizing behaviors that systematically results in a lower ARS and AA students exhibiting externalizing behaviors that systematically results in a higher ARS? Results indicated that (a) when compared to White, Hispanic/Latino students are indeed less likely to be perceived by the pre-service teachers as exhibiting EBD-like behaviors regardless of the behavior (externalizing, internalizing, or neutral) displayed, (b) externalizing behaviors was the strongest predictor for perceiving someone as at-risk for having EBD-like behaviors, and (c) no interaction effects were found.