Abstract
Students with a specific learning disability (SLD) experience grave challenges with learning in the general education (GE) setting compared to their nondisabled peers. In the 2022 Condition of Education report, Black male students with disabilities (SWD) were among the highest percentage of students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The ‘pushing out' of SWD can organize experiences of learning disengagement resulting in a lack of proficient reading ability and knowledge. This chapter explores how Black male SWD are pushed out and denied equitable education access using radical critical schooling as the framework for investigation. Through this method of investigation, the chapter will present a transformative view into the world of a Black high school educator of Black SWD from disadvantaged backgrounds and high-need, Title I schools housed in poverty-stricken, underserved, urban communities.
TopThe Story
It is year three for Malcolm, and he is beginning his third semester in Ms. Chandler's ninth-grade Reading Enrichment and Literature class. Ms. Chandler teaches the ninth-grade English core courses at Harbor High in Atlanta, Georgia. Ms. Chandler’s class is also a repeater course designed for students who have previously failed ninth-grade English. Harbor is the feeder high school for three area middle schools and is a Title I public school serving a large percentage of low-income and economically and socially disadvantaged, primarily children of color.
Malcolm is a sixteen-year-old student with disabilities. At the age of six, he was diagnosed with specific learning disability and speech-language impairment. Those labels make him eligible for special education services, determining his academic needs and placement. Malcolm is being served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and has an Individual Education Program (IEP) to meet his individual and specific academic needs. Ms. Perdy, a special education teacher and Malcolm’s second case manager since his initial entry into ninth grade, is especially concerned with Malcolm’s transition plans. The transition plan is a critical part of the IEP, which begins in the ninth grade and outlines the appropriate post-secondary goals and services required to meet those goals. He will celebrate his seventeenth birthday just days before Thanksgiving, and Ms. Perdy understands what that means. This means Malcolm will be seventeen, trapped in the ninth grade, and this situation could have detrimental and everlasting effects on his future.
Malcolm has many friends and is quite popular; in fact, most of his friends he has known since elementary school. The friends graduated together from fifth and eighth grades, moving from one feeder school to the next. All but one of Malcolm’s friends from his ninth-grade cohort are in Mr. Dylan’s eleventh-grade American Literature class. Malcolm’s friends are classified as juniors and are looking forward to being seniors next year. Malcolm and his friends are no longer in the same courses and see each other passing in the hallways or during lunch waves. Ms. Perdy often wonders how Malcolm feels about watching his friends move on without him.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP): An approach to education curricula that stresses the importance of including students’ ethnically diverse cultural backgrounds to promote academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.
Radical Schooling Theory (RST): A theoretical approach that recognizes critical thinking to examine, expose, and challenge social justice issues within the institution of education.
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): Public Law 94-142 is a federal legislation enacted to ensure the legal rights to free education and services for children with disabilities aged 3-21.
Intersectionality: This theorizes the strata of oppression based on the multiple intersections of cultural identities such as race, class, ability, gender, linguistics, sexuality, etc.
Abolitionist Teaching: A teaching approach aimed at challenging and fighting systems of oppression by exposing social justice issues within the educational system.
Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit): A theory that combines the concepts of disability and critical studies to examine the issues of discrimination practices involving ableism and racism within the educational system and society.
Students With Dis/abilities: A term used to encompass children and individuals with dis/abilities within the educational system. “The term dis/ability (spelled with the slash) is used intentionally to counter the word disability (spelled without the slash). The term disability (spelled without the slash) suggests that a person is represented, or identified, by what they cannot do, rather than what they can do.” ( Rausch, et al., 2019 , p. 45).
Cultural Hegemony: A theory developed to explain the power dynamics between cultures where the dominant culture’s beliefs, norms, and values are the standards for maintaining societal control.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE): A legal requirement of FAPE that identifies educational placement for students with disabilities to receive appropriate education alongside their nondisabled peers.
Individual Education Program (IEP): A provision of the IDEA and FAPE that develops an education plan to ensure students with disabilities receive appropriate education and services to guarantee academic progress.
Critical Race Theory (CRT): A theoretical framework born from Critical Legal Studies (CLS), used in academia to examine, expose, critique, and understand the various ways racism exists systemically within societies and educational institutions.
Dark oppression: This refers to the number of ways people of color and other marginalized groups experience institutional, social, and systemic injustices involving ethnicity, race, and other characteristically discriminatory and suppressive practices within society.
Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE): A legal provision of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that provides education and necessary services, and legal rights for students with disabilities for free.