Sharpening Blunt Instruments: The Case for Moving Beyond Binaries in Education Research With English Learners and Students With Disabilities

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Using Data in Decision Making: Policy and Practice

Abstract

Many traditionally underserved student subgroups such as English learners (ELs), students with disabilities (SWDs), homeless students, and low-income students are highly diverse with significant internal variation. Yet researchers, practitioners, and policymakers often overlook this variation treating these subgroups in dichotomous terms (e.g., EL and non-EL). Doing so masks potentially important heterogeneity in the relationship between an education policy or program and student outcomes. In this conceptual paper, we explore this phenomenon ELs and SWDs, in the context school choice. We assert that the next generation of scholarship investigating the potential of education policies and programs to reduce inequality and close opportunity gaps hinges upon the use of data that goes beyond simple binaries and accounts for meaningful within-subgroup diversity.

Authors

• Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education

• Madeline Mavrogordato, Michigan State University