A Disability Studies in Education (DSE) Analysis of Corporate-Based Educational Reform Undermining Educational Equity in New Orleans

• In Event: Practicing Disability Studies in Education, Acting Toward Social Change

Abstract

The United States has seen a recent rapid increase in charter schools as part of the corporate educational reform movement. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of this rapid increase relative to educational equity, opportunity, and inclusion. In what ways do charter schools constrain or enable educational opportunities within a community? What might the growth in charter schools mean for students with identified social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic, and/or embodied differences?
To investigate these questions I work from the perspective of Disability Studies in Education (DSE). DSE argues for an examination of the institutional and cultural practices of school that shape dis/ability (Author, 2013; Connor & Gabel, 2013). Scholars in DSE have drawn our attention to the overrepresentation of children of color and of children who are learning English as a Second Language in disability categories and in restrictive, segregated educational settings (Artiles & Kozleski, 2007, Artiles, 2011). The “dis/ability apartheid” (Connor and Gabel, 2013, p. 101) that results from such educational sorting works against achieving educational equity through access and inclusion and creates unequal educational opportunities for students of color, children from low-income homes, and students identified as having special needs (Author, 2013; Connor and Gabel, 2013; Connor & Ferri, 2007; Ferri & Connor, 2005; Ferri, 2008).
A DSE lens positions us to examine the impact of charter schools on the current conditions of legalized segregation. Does the rise in “school choice” mean greater opportunities for students to learn in differentiated ways, or does it mean greater exclusion from interactions with their peers? In the proposed paper, I investigate this question in the context of P.B. et al v. Pastorek (2010), a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (working with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Community Justice section of the Loyola Law Clinic, and the Southern Disability Law Center). The lawsuit alleges that roughly 4,500 students with disabilities are denied equal access to educational opportunities in New Orleans, the US school district with the highest proportion of public charter schools, and that as such the school district of New Orleans is in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The data for this study are drawn from publicly available written documents and include (1) the case filings and documents relative to P.B. et al v. Pastorek (2010); (2) New Orleans Public School District records; and (3) the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The primary method of analysis I apply to these data is critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Luke 1995-1996).
DSE analysis of P.B. et al v. Pasterek and the IDEA (1) makes visible the definitions of dis/ability, difference, inclusion and equity at play within the social, legal, and policy discourses that intersect in this case, and (2) illustrates how such corporate based reform efforts undermine educational equity.

Author

• Kathleen M. Collins, The Pennsylvania State University