Transforming Data Into Practice: Mobilizing System Data to Address Race and Disability Justice in Schools

• In Event: The Possibilities and Challenges of Data-Sharing to Inform Policy Advocacy and Enactment Across Organizations

Abstract

Schools across the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) have been (re)framing special education services within a model of inclusion. As part of a system change towards greater inclusion, administrators and educators have relied heavily on the TDSB’s extensive collection and analysis of student demographic, program and achievement data to inform their strategic planning. Through an ongoing case study involving a middle school within the TDSB, this paper demonstrates the ways in which schools are actively engaging in research, particularly through the use of system data, to shape their enactment of policies and practices. This particular middle school has a predominantly racialized student population (only 3% self-identify as white), where just over half of families earn a family income below the low-income measure and just over a third of our families receive social assistance. This school is also host to a variety of self-contained special education programs.
Of critical importance to school leaders is the issue of conflation between race, poverty and disability (Brantlinger, 2006; Connor 2017; Erevelles, 2014; Reid & Knight, 2006). As such, staff at the middle school have been working intensively with system data that identifies the disproportionate representation of racialized students within special education categories and programs (Author 3 & others, 2010; 2013). Additionally, staff have engaged further with evidence drawn from system data that demonstrates the role special education placement plays in streaming students towards non-Academic programming in high school (Author 3 & others, 2019) as well as the conflation of race, class, gender and disability as measured through the perceptions of educators (Author 3 & others, 2018).
Employing both critical race and critical disability theory, this study maps one school’s journey over the past two years towards re-shaping their traditional policies, practices and mindsets around special education identification and program placement. Critical race and critical disability theory address the ways in which racialized bodies, in particular, are constructed as disabled and query the roles institutions play in further disabling students through exclusionary policies and practices. System data drawn from the TDSB substantiates these claims. This study challenges traditional responses to disability through the integration of racial and disability justice theoretical frames and through the mobilization and centralization of system data.
The work undertaken this year has been largely focused on uncovering and challenging biases and mindsets that lead to unconscious programming and planning for students that leads to the social and cultural reproduction of disadvantage. In particular, intersecting data on race and special education is providing deeper conversations about how to identify and name the ways in which anti-Black racism is systemically reproduced. Findings support how inclusion can be supported through culturally relevant programming as well as a shift in policies and procedures in the school which may be leading to unintentional streaming of students. Central to the success of this work is and will continue to be engaging educators in social justice coupled with the capacity to identify, track and monitor student pathways and access through system data.

Authors

• Salima Kassam, Toronto District School Board

• Gillian Parekh, York University