Betwixt and Between: Students of Color With Disabilities and the Paradox of Equity in Educational Policy

• In Event: 69.057 - Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 69.057-11 - Tinkering Toward Success: Critical Considerations on the Intersection of Disability Studies and Educational Policy

Abstract

Despite policy attempts to expand the educational opportunities and civil rights of students with disabilities, trends in racial disproportionality in special education endure. Using an interdisciplinary lens, this case study of a suburban school district with a changing sociodemographic population examines how sociocultural, historical, and contextual factors contribute to the educational paradox that exists between persistent racial disparities in educational outcomes, a policy framework that aims to provide equal opportunity, and the persistence of racial disproportionality in special education. Findings reveal how students were caught between multiple spaces that affected the opportunities of students’ racialized bodies within a demographically changing suburban school district, and between converging and contradicting policies that failed to address students’ intersectional needs.

Authors

• Adai A. Tefera, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, Touro College

• Alfredo J. Artiles, Arizona State University

• Sarah Alvarado Diaz, Arizona State University - Tempe

• Lisa Jackson, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Alexandra Aylward, New York University