Does Compliance Matter? Racial Disproportionality and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Special Education

Abstract

The paper is a comparative ethnography which explores the educational paradox between extensive legal regulation of special education and the persistence of racialized disparate outcomes in special education, known as disproportionality. The paper uses neo-institutional theory to understand how compliance with IDEA relates to disproportionality. It also uses a theory of fragmented harm which connects individual’s everyday actions within schools to broader inequalities. Fieldwork occurred during the 2011-2012 school year and involved approximately 1200 hours of observations and interviews in three suburban school districts that had varying sociodemographics yet all experienced a citation for disproportionality. Data analysis revealed a citation had manifest effects on practice but did not shift latent norms and biases in the local context. Disproportionality persisted despite legal compliance with IDEA because of three factors. The first was the influence local racial and class dynamics had on practice. The second consisted of how leadership engaged with these dynamics and the third was a complex mechanism whereby local context and practitioners engagement with it, coalesced around policy mandates which inadvertently reified existing inequities. The paper suggests the historical intent of equality in policy and law, embedded in IDEA, has been flawed when applied to practice and assuring equal opportunity through IDEA does not sufficiently challenge structures of inequality.

Author

• Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, New York University