The “Frog-Pond Theory” posits that the same student would appear worse in a higher-performing school as opposed to a lower-performing school, as their academic performance would be weighed against their immediate peers. However, a lower-performing school may also have less financial resources to accommodate students with disabilities. This theory thus suggests that students who perform only slightly below average academically may be placed into special education in high-performing schools, whereas only the extremely low-performing students will be able to receive special education in low-performing schools