ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-0597-6212

Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Psychology (Ph.D.)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

William F Chaplin

Second Advisor

Melissa Peckins

Third Advisor

Imad Zaheer

Abstract

This quantitative, non-experimental study used existing administrative data from the New York City (NYC) Department of Education (DOE) to test hypotheses about the relationship between relative developmental age in academic cohort and likelihood of special education classification for Learning Disability (LD), Speech or Language Impairment (SI), Emotional Disability (ED), or Other Health Impairment (OHI) in the NYC public schools. This ethnically diverse sample consisted of 360,741 boys (51.1%) and 345,486 girls (48.9%) in grades kindergarten through twelve. Crosstabulations were used to describe classification rates by relative age, defined as being born in first or last quartile of calendar year, and student subgroup, and chi-square tests of independence were conducted to assess associations between relative age and disability classification. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine the overall relationship between relative age and special education classification/placement and to test whether the relative age effect differs in the NYC public schools by grade level, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), or English language learner (ELL) status by including terms that reflect these interactions. Results found that relative age in academic cohort is one of the factors that predicts referral/placement in special education; with those students who are born later in the calendar year being more likely to be referred for/placed in special education, with one of the four study classifications, than students born in the beginning of the calendar year. This relative age effect is robust, persisting across grade level, gender, SES, and ELL status, with relatively younger students having significantly higher odds of disability classification for one of the four study categories, and significant interaction terms indicated that the magnitude of the association was also modestly moderated by grade level, gender, SES, and ELL status. Implications for the field of school psychology, recommendations, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed

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