Based on the author's experience leading equity-focused technical assistance centers, this book details approaches to partnering with educators and other stakeholders to eliminate racial disproportionality in special education. Because of its historical and current relevance as an indicator of systemic oppression, Thorius centers disproportionality as a crucial issue to be addressed through technical assistance partnerships. For these partnerships to be successful, technical assistance providers must: (1) support partners in engaging with systemic and individual oppressions that contribute to inequities at the intersections of racism and ableism, and (2) introduce partners to resources that mediate learning about, and development of, locally relevant solutions that abolish racism and ableism in tandem. Equity Expansive Technical Assistance for Schools provides a research-based framework for conducting technical assistance, including vignettes and facilitation guides that educational leaders can use to address disproportionality in special education within their local contexts. Book Features: Detailed protocols for professional dialogue toward eliminating racial disproportionality in special education. Expanded definitions and descriptions of disproportionality as an issue of ableism, as well as racism. Real-life examples of technical assistance and professional development partnership activities that improve conditions leading to, and outcomes of, disproportionality.

"Discover an innovative framework for addressing intersectionality within educational spaces designed to combat the cumulative effects of systemic marginalization due to race, gender, disability, class, sexual orientation, and other identity-based labels. Highlighting diverse ways of knowing, this book will generate insights that can inform more equitable policy analysis, research, and practice"--

Based on the author’s experience leading equity-focused technical assistance centers, this book details approaches to partnering with educators and other stakeholders to eliminate racial disproportionality in special education. Because of its historical and current relevance as an indicator of systemic oppression, Thorius centers disproportionality as a crucial issue to be addressed through technical assistance partnerships. For these partnerships to be successful, technical assistance providers must: (1) support partners in engaging with systemic and individual oppressions that contribute to inequities at the intersections of racism and ableism, and (2) introduce their partners to resources that mediate learning about and developing locally relevant solutions that abolish racism and ableism in tandem. Equity Expansive Technical Assistance for Schools provides a research-based framework for conducting technical assistance, including vignettes and facilitation guides that educational leaders can use to address disproportionality in special education within their local contexts. Book Features: Detailed protocols for professional dialogue toward eliminating racial disproportionality in special education.Expanded definitions and descriptions of disproportionality as an issue of ableism, as well as racism.Real-life examples of technical assistance and professional development partnership activities that improve conditions leading to, and outcomes of, disproportionality.

This book asks a question that many educators may think, but won’t say out loud: Does compliance with IDEA legislation matter? The author acknowledges that, while compliance with IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is important, it can also be an administrative burden that detracts from practitioners’ capacity to adequately serve students with disabilities. Using data collected from three suburban school districts, Voulgarides helps us to understand how compliance with IDEA intersects with decades of evidence of racial inequities in student outcomes. This timely and thought-provoking book unpacks the civil rights history of IDEA, examines the impact of its procedural focus on educational practice, and questions why racial inequities in special education persist despite good intentions by policymakers, educators, and school personnel. Book Features: Uses empirical evidence to examine the common assumption that compliance with IDEA leads to educational equity. Focuses on the different dimensions of the equity concern that lie at the intersection between race, disability, and educational policy. Challenges practitioners to think about the roles they play in both the production and the disruption of educational inequities.

Step outside of the IEPs and behavioral paperwork currently generated in schools, go where disabled people are thriving today, and see the results in learning, growth, and expression. This authoritative book offers readers alternative ways to think about learning and behavior in special education. Through illustrative case studies and a disability studies lens, author Erin McCloskey uses the voices of people with disabilities to show how these students progress creatively outside the classroom and school building--at the dojo, the riding arena, the theater stage, the music studio, and other community-centered spaces where disabled students can make choices about their learning, their bodies, and their goals. Balancing theory and practice, the book describes alternative learning spaces, demonstrates how disabled students learn there, and passes on the important lessons learned in each space. The ideas apply to students of all ages with a wide variety of disabilities. Book Features: Uses the voices of people with disabilities to promote alternative ways to think about learning and behavior in special education. Presents rich case studies and briefer interludes to illustrate how disabled students are learning and thriving in surprising ways outside of school where they have opportunities to explore. Distills important key takeaways from each case study through chapter sections of "lessons learned." Promotes informed discussion of the concepts in the book with questions at the end of each chapter. Combines theory and practice to help readers put the concepts into action in a variety of settings with a variety of disabled students.

Educators remove over 3.45 million students from school annually for disciplinary reasons, despite strong evidence that school suspension policies are harmful to students. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that disciplinary policies and practices that schools control directly exacerbate today's profound inequities in educational opportunity and outcomes. Part I explores how suspensions flow along the lines of race, gender, and disability status. Part II examines potential remedies that show great promise, including a district-wide approach in Cleveland, Ohio, aimed at social and emotional learning strategies. Closing the School Discipline Gap is a call for action that focuses on an area in which public schools can and should make powerful improvements, in a relatively short period of time. Contributors include Robert Balfanz, Jamilia Blake, Dewey Cornell, Jeremy D. Finn, Thalia González, Anne Gregory, Daniel J. Losen, David M. Osher, Russell J. Skiba, Ivory A. Toldson “Closing the School Discipline Gap can make an enormous difference in reducing disciplinary exclusions across the country. This book not only exposes unsound practices and their disparate impact on the historically disadvantaged, but provides educators, policymakers, and community advocates with an array of remedies that are proven effective or hold great promise. Educators, communities, and students alike can benefit from the promising interventions and well-grounded recommendations.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “For over four decades school discipline policies and practices in too many places have pushed children out of school, especially children of color. Closing the School Discipline Gap shows that adults have the power—and responsibility—to change school climates to better meet the needs of children. This volume is a call to action for policymakers, educators, parents, and students.” —Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children’s Defense Fund

This book examines how the use of the “at-risk” category and label creates problems for students and teachers. Drawing from research across various education sites, the author illustrates how educators recognize the label’s potential to redress issues of equity, but warns that it can also stigmatize the students so labeled. Brown explores how the labeling and subsequent practices by teachers and schools actually affect students, such as classifying many individuals as deficient. The text provides a historical overview, discusses the role of federal education policy and teaching, and includes tools to help readers acquire more complex, critical understandings of risk in educational practice. After the “At-Risk” Label not only challenges the education community to reorient itself to a more equitable discourse, it provides a framework for changing the structural conditions of schooling to better serve all students. Book Features: Offers a critical appraisal of how schools, policy, and teachers may be complicit in exacerbating conditions that lead to risk. Shows how race and class biases might be manifested in the “at-risk” identification process.Outlines a framework for making sense of, and acting in response to, risk that attends to both the individual and the institution. Provides a set of key questions, terms, and a list of extended activities in each chapter. “In this book, Keffrelyn Brown takes the common notion of ‘at-risk’ and turns it on its head. It is imperative that people who deal with children and teens grapple with the centrality of her notions. This is a must read!” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “In this important and timely book, Keffrelyn Brown provides a much-needed basis for radically rethinking whether risk can be part of a critical social justice project in education.” —David Gillborn, University of Birmingham, UK “This book represents an audaciously genuine call to know more about, to see more in, and do more for students who have somehow amassed the label ‘at-risk!’” —H. Richard Milner IV, University of Pittsburgh