Affective Intersectional Disability Justice for a Critical Reimagining of IDEA

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Expansive Theoretical Considerations for Disability Studies in Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper is focused on analyzing the policy arena of special education. We center the racial disproportionality in special education outcomes, which includes the misdiagnosis, over-representation and overuse of suspensions of BIYOC in more restrictive settings as compared to white peers. The racial disproportionality is more likely to occur with subjective categories of special education classifications such as specific learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders. Our goal is to re-imagine IDEA through an intersectional, discursive, emotive, and material understanding of the outcomes of the legislation. We assert that the IDEA has created powerful and institutionalized inequities with uninterrogated beliefs about dis/ability and the dominance of a normalization discourse, and is rooted in racist and ableist language and framing.

Authors

• David Isaac Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, Hunter College

• Susan Larson Etscheidt, University of Northern Iowa