| The purpose of the study was to examine categories of disabilities and disputes common to special education hearings in the State of Texas between 2006 and 2008, and to determine which party typically prevailed in these hearings. Special education disability was based on the 13 categories identified by the State of Texas. Chi square compared percentages of the state student population in the 13 special education categories with the respective percentages of disabilities found within due process hearings. The calculated value of chi square was 63.22 (p < .001). Percentages for due process hearings are significantly underrepresented in the Learning Disability (LD) category and significantly overrepresented in the Autism (AU) category.;Utilized in this study were 122 special education due process cases and 480 separate issues or disputes within those 122 cases. Each individual dispute was assigned to one of the following categories: Free Appropriate Public Education, Identification and Evaluation, Individualized Education Plan, Placement or Least Restrictive Environment, Procedural Safeguards, or Related Services. The calculated value of chi square was 0.21 (p > .05). The results indicated verification that the categories of dispute are independent of rulings held.;Descriptive statistics revealed out of 480 disputes, 393 were ruled in favor of the school districts and 75 in favor of the student. The calculated chi square value for the goodness of fit was 46.24 with one degree of freedom (p < .001). Thus, the percentage of rulings in favor of the district is significantly larger than the percentage of rulings for students.;The calculated value of chi square for the contingency table regarding the 17 hearing officers was 39.70 (p < .001). Three hearing officers tended to rule disproportionally for the district and two hearing officers tended to rule disproportionally for the student. The remaining 12 hearing officers are close to expectations; however, the distribution of prevailing parties is clearly not independent of hearing officers. |
