Lessons from a State-led Policy Intervention to Repair the Harm of Racial Disproportionality in Special Education

• In Event: Exclusionary Practices and Reparative Pathways at the Intersection of Disability and Race

Abstract

Racial disproportionality continues to be an elusive problem that educators in the United States struggle to address. Researchers have spent endless effort unpacking the issue and creating solutions to address this phenomenon, arguing for changing the attitudes and beliefs of practitioners (Moreno & Gaytán, 2013). Other scholars have advocated for using alternative frames such as cultural historical paradigm to address marginalization (Artiles, 2009; Bal et al., 2014). Additionally, scholars have begun to examine the role that policy plays in racial disproportionality (McCall & Skrtic, 2009; Cavendish et al., 2018; Tefera & Fischman, 2020). In this paper, I explore the affordances and limitations of a state-led policy intervention that attempts to repair the harm of deficit ideologies embedded in federal and state-level eligibility policy. For argument's sake, segregation can be viewed as a physical space and a classification (Siuty & Fair, 2023). For example, special education and general education are both material spaces that individuals occupy and categories students are assigned. As a result, racial disproportionality in special education is an avenue for segregation in schools. By comparing policy discourse from policy-related documents and interviews with staff at the state education agencies, special education leaders, and school psychologists, I illustrate how a dominant understanding of disability mitigates repair efforts via policy implementation.

Wisconsin's 2021 proactive administrative rule change for Emotional Behavioral Disorders (EBD), found in s.115.76(5)(a)5, stands out as an independent initiative by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), diverging from typical mandated updates in disability policies. This update, the first since the early 2000s, has three purposes (Underly, 2021):

1. To reduce racial disproportionality within EBD across Wisconsin.
2. To update the policy to require the use of evidence-based positive behavioral interventions prior to identification.
3. To reflect best practices as it relates to students with trauma, mental health conditions, social-emotional learning, and other related topics.

Using mixed-methods (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2018), I discovered that politics influenced the new administrative rule development. Specifically, conservative legislators challenged the use of equitable language within the policy. Additionally, practitioners' understanding of the disability relied on either the stigma of the disability or the fear of being identified as disproportionate by the state education agency, which stifled the policy's implementation. To frame the analysis, I utilize Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2016) to show the nuanced ways racism and ableism affect solutions designed to address racial disproportionality in special education. The implications of this work warrant a critical question to allow policymakers, educators, and researchers to pause and reflect: How can special education policy interventions confront dominant understandings of disability while remaining compliant with federal legislation?

Author

• Deonte E. Iverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison