Racial Disproportionality in Special Education and Suspensions, Equal Opportunity, and Zero Tolerance: A Paradoxical and Troubling Relationship

• In Event: 35.077 - Pushing Beyond Zero: Issues in Zero-Tolerance School Discipline and Positive Discipline Alternatives

Abstract

This paper proposal explores how zero tolerance policies relate to disparate racialized outcomes in suspensions for students with disabilities. Qualitative research was conducted in a school district that has been federally cited for racial disproportionality in suspensions, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), for 7 consecutive years. The district assumed a zero tolerance policy towards school discipline in attempts to mediate their citation. The purpose of the paper is to show how zero tolerance polices interact with disability law, which by principal assures equal educational opportunity for all, and how the district’s use of the two polices (zero tolerance and IDEA) perpetuated racialized disciplinary outcomes.
Artiles (2011) argues that disability law (IDEA), designed to protect students with disabilities, has paradoxically created a space where certain racial groups have become further marginalized within the educational system as evidenced by disproportionality in special education. The paper engages with this educational paradox and asks: In what ways does legal compliance to federal and state special education law relate to the occurrence of disproportionality in suspensions?
The paper uses neo-institutional theory to understand how compliance with IDEA relates to disproportionality in suspensions. Neo-institutionalism acknowledges that schools operate within a legal and policy environment that affects the delivery of education just as much as the ecological context (Arum, 2000) and provides a conceptual bridge between the macro intent of policy and the micro application of it to practice.
The paper used an ethnographic approach known as the extended case method (Burawoy, 2009) which allows for data analysis to remain conceptually focused on theory, the legal and organizational forces that shape practice, while also recognizing the agency practitioners have in their environments. The paper is part of a larger comparative ethnographic study that focused on how policy relates to mediation of disproportionality in 3 suburban school districts. Fieldwork occurred during the 2011-2012 school year and was primarily focused on shadowing district administrators as they tried to mediate their citation. Fieldwork involved approximately 1200 hours of combined observations and interviews in the three districts. The data was analyzed using a case oriented approach (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Ragin, 1987) which looked for similarities and differences across several data sources within the school district.
The data analysis revealed that the local community context, which was experiencing socioeconomic and racial demographic changes, contributed to the district administrator’s perceived need to use strict discipline policies. The research suggests that the use of zero tolerance was a reaction to the changing local context however its use exacerbated tensions in the school and community and alienated many students of color from the schooling process. The paper suggests zero tolerance policies not only fail to change student behavior but add to existing race based tensions in the local context and the persistence of disproportionality in practice.

Author

• Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, New York University