Abstract: The topic of this dissertation was the factors that contribute to disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs. The problem that motivated this study was that achievement gaps, high drop-out rates, low graduation rates, discipline occurrences, and low student retention rates plague students who are served in special education, and that African American students are disproportionately placed in special education programs. However, the reasons for the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education programs are unclear. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine special education directors’ leadership role characteristics such as (a) tenure as special education program director, (b) gender, (c) years of experience in education, (d) race or ethnicity, and (e) level of implementation of response-to-intervention (RTI) to determine how those factors impact district disproportionality for minority students in Georgia. A total of 155 of the 180 district-level Special Education Directors in the State of Georgia participated in this study. The results showed that the demographic and background characteristics of the Special Education Directors and the level of RTI were not related to disproportionality. Based on these results, it was recommended that future researchers should replicate this study in other geographic areas, should develop more comprehensive models of disproportionality, and should perform qualitative studies to develop a more comprehensive view of disproportionality.