For all youth, the process of transitioning to adulthood and achieving milestones such as completing school, entering the workforce, leaving home, and getting married has become longer, and for vulnerable populations, such as those with disabilities, this transition can be particularly difficult, stressful, and complex. There are an estimated 1.7 million children identified as having a developmental disability and these numbers are rising. Attention to transition issues among youth with disabilities has resulted in several calls for increased coordination between the school and adult service systems as well as a number of national best practice frameworks for preparing youth with disabilities for transition. However, post-high school outcomes for young adults with disabilities remain vastly different than those without disabilities with decades of research demonstrating that young adults with disabilities continue to experience poor graduation rates, low employment rates, less postsecondary education participation, and low income. The high school experience is considered crucial to the launching into adulthood for individuals with disabilities, so it is critical to identify the factors that indicate successful transition and those that may be intervened upon before leaving school. A growing area of concern is the disparity in serious school discipline and law enforcement involvement for students with disabilities. Youth with disabilities are disproportionally affected by harsh school disciplinary actions, school arrests, and juvenile legal system referrals. A recent US GAO report indicated youth with disabilities had a suspension rate twice that of other students, which holds true even after controlling for poverty. This study explored whether disability and its various types (physical, emotional/behavioral, cognitive) negatively impact outcomes for youth in high school, including serious school discipline and law enforcement involvement as these issues can adversely impact the transition to adulthood. This study conducted a secondary analysis using data from the Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study, a population-based urban birth cohort followed across six waves in 20 large U.S. cities, linked with unique restricted school-level data from the Civil Rights Data Collection and the National Center for Education Statistics. Out of the full sample size of approximately 2,500 youth at approximately age 15, a full third (33%) was identified as having a measurable disability based on various definitions. This study tested whether the presence of and type of disability by age 9 was associated with increased serious school discipline, measured by caregiver and youth reported suspensions and expulsions, and law enforcement involvement, measured by youth reported police stops and arrests, at age 15. Disability status included disabling health (physical/developmental, cognitive, or emotional/behavioral) conditions by age 9 as reported by the caregiver, and cognitive disability, measured at age 9 by a test of verbal ability, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). Associations were estimated using linear and logistic regression models, controlling for a rich set of child and family characteristics. Additionally, this study tested whether a number of pertinent factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, school environment, and neighborhood and household poverty, moderated these associations using regression models that included interaction terms. Different indicators of the independent and dependent variables were tested to include continuous, dichotomous, and categorical variables for both main effects and sensitivity analyses. Additional supplementary analyses included a city fixed effects model to address unobserved variation between cities that could be confounding and different levels of racial segregation in schools. This examination lays the groundwork for specific transition intervention points in terms of both timing and population. Few studies have explicitly examined the associations of disability with school disciplinary actions and whether there are differences by types of disability and those that are available have used small, non-representative samples and lacked methodological rigor. As more youth with disabilities exit high school with poor outcomes, identifying the factors that impede successful transition during the high school years is imperative for changing this pattern.
