Are Remedy and Repair Possible Within Contemporary Special Education?

• In Event: Critically Complicating (Special) Education Policy, Process, and Praxis Through Family, Youth, Educator, and Scholar Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose
Aligned with this year’s call for learning and care grounded in community knowledge (Scott et al., 2024), this project focuses on one Arab American family navigating (special) educational policies, services, and supports for their son at their neighborhood school. The family’s resulting solutions for genuine educational remedy and repair, particularly pertaining to special education, will be discussed.

Theoretical Framing
This project is grounded in community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) and ecological resistance and resilience (Gutiérrez, 2016; Walker & Salt, 2012). This blended framing positions multiply-marginalized families of color, who are culturally and linguistically diverse and who have children with disabilities, as essential leaders in deconstructing and reconstructing special education (Author, 2019). Administrators, teachers, and staff within schools, as typical sites of oppression, often criticize and ignore these families especially and the collective cultural capital they hold (Harry, 2008; Park, 2024). Ecological resilience supports a deeper, more nuanced understanding of how families renegotiate inequitable systems, policies, and practices, and when blended with community cultural wealth, embodies and honors familial strength and tenacity (Walker & Salt, 2012; Yosso, 2005).

Methods
This critical case study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) centers one Arab American family with a 7 year old son with an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The first author is a community-based researcher and advocate. The second author is a university-based researcher and family advocate. To this end, we focus on familial perspectives, experiences, and solutions from PreK through 1st Grade.

Data Sources
Primary data sources are from the family: (a) family and child narratives (b) communications between the family and teachers, consultants, related services, and administrators (e.g., emails), (c) IEPs and all associated documents (e.g., amendments, behavior plans, evaluations, meeting notes), and (d) classroom-based materials (e.g., accommodations, modifications, social stories, token economies). Secondary data sources are from the family advocate: observations and field notes of school spaces and practice recommendations.

Results
The family and their son experienced institutionalized ableism that spanned ideology, practice, and policy. They had little to no access to appropriate resources and endured emotional abuse. Their son was not afforded membership in his classroom and relationships with peers. In response, the family engaged in many proactive, responsive, and protective strategies to advocate and fight for their son. Asset-based ideologies, strengths-based practices, and educator professional development were available to the school and district via the family and local university. Yet, deficit-laden planning and decision-making at the classroom, school, and district level were pervasive.

Scholarly Significance
It is necessary to understand familial experiences to reimagine special education systemically. However, multiply-marginalized families and children should not have to continue to endure from schools and districts to prove that special education is not working (Batz & Yadav, 2024; Harry & Ocasio-Stoutenberg, 2020; Lalvani & Osieja, 2024). A new path forward is required (Taylor et al., 2024). Situated as necessary leaders in deconstructing and reconstructing special education, multiply-marginalized families of color and their children with disabilities should be “designers of their own futures” (Gutiérrez, 2016, p. 192).

Authors

• Ava Zeineddin-Fawaz, Family Advocate

• Amanda L. Miller, Wayne State University