Reconceptualizing the Question of Racial Bias in Disability Categorization

• In Event: 26.081 - Poster Session 3
  In Poster Session: 26.081-7 - Special Education Research SIG: Exploring Race, Disability Status, and Social/Emotional Outcomes

Abstract

This study transcends the theoretical and empirical limitations of existing research on racial/ethnic disproportionality in special education by reconceptualizing the problem. In terms of theory, it presupposes structural theories of race relations, which researchers have begun using to frame the disproportionality, and extends it into school organizations using the institutional theory of organizational inequality to explain the mechanisms by which external racial hierarchies are manifested in racialized social relations within schools. This explanation is tested quasi-experimentally in an urban district under conditions in which the inequities of disproportionality are contested by a desegregation order, which permits a comparison of the status quo to a counterfactual situation in which the district is forced to resolve the presenting inequities.

Authors

• Thomas M. Skrtic, The University of Kansas

• Argun Saatcioglu, The University of Kansas