Promoting Access Through Segregation: The Emergence of the "Prioritized Curriculum" Class

• In Event: 53.081 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 53.081-16 - Interrupting, Promoting, Constructing, and Reframing: How New Narratives Are Created and Challenged

Abstract

The continuously evolving standards-based reform (SBR) movement is one of the most prominent features of today’s educational policy landscape. As SBR has continued to drive educational policy, local schools and districts have adopted many approaches to comply with legal mandates. This paper critically examines one particular resultant phenomenon of the SBR movement—the emergence of a new track of self-contained classes called Prioritized Curriculum classes, designed to provide students with disabilities access to standards-based general education curriculum, but in a segregated class and at a modified pace. In this paper presentation, we document the emergence of such courses and use a disability studies in education framework to critically analyze the rationales and policy loopholes that have led to their creation.

Authors

• Jessica K. Bacon, Montclair State University

• Carrie E Rood, SUNY - College at Cortland

• Beth A. Ferri, Syracuse University