Medicalized Exclusion Replaces Disciplinary Exclusion via PBIS/RTI (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports/Response to Intervention)

• In Event: Including and Excluding (Dis)ability

Abstract

Building inclusive schools requires leaders who envision a place for all students. Although they conceive of a fully inclusive school for race, gender, class, sexual orientation, language fluency, and disability, they often compromise that ideal for students they see as perhaps legitimately excludable: students thought to have emotional and behavioral disorders. That compromise employs discourses of ideals vs. practicalities, support vs. punishment, utility and futility, which are troubling in light of disproportionality at the intersections of race, gender, class, and disability.
This study analyzes leaders’ discourses as they consider 1) legitimate data for decision-making about students regarded as having emotional or behavioral disorders, 2) sound practices of including them, and 3) their schools’ capacities to achieve full inclusion.

Author

• Joshua Bornstein, Syracuse University