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Our Halloween Special: The Ghost of the Bell Curve with Rebecca Cruz · DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates

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From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional
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Children, this is Dive in, the podcast,
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where we ask difficult questions about the education of students with disabilities.
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And occasionally we pretend we have the answers. I'm your
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host, Federico Vitolo, professor at the University of Illinois,
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Chicago. So, are you ready? Let's dive in.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of
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Dive In. And today, we have something special,
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a Halloween episode.
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Now, normally, Halloween podcasts give you haunted houses,
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ghosts, demons, possessed dolls, people making extremely
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poor decisions in dark basement. But this is diving. So naturally,
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you guess it. Actually, you did not guess it. Our goals is
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a statistical distribution. The Bell Curve. I know.
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Terrifying. Somewhere, a graduate student, after not passing
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their statistics class, just woke up screaming. Normal constribution?
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No. But today's ghost is actually much
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more serious. Some ideas do not disappear simply because they work
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in the background taken for granted. Sometimes we bury them.
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We change the terminology. And then one day,
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we turn around and realize they're still there. Hunting our
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assumptions, hunting our research, hunting the disability categories
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we use, hunting the ways we decide who is normal, who is different, who belongs,
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and who needs to be fixed. That is the premise behind a
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fascinating new book called the Ghost of the Bell Curve.
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Ableism in American An Agenda for Change, written by
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Rebecca Cruz and Alison Firestone. And my guest today is one of the
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authors, Rebecca Cruz, who. She's also an assistant professor at the Johns
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Hopkins University School of Education. Rebecca studies
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disproportionality, discipline, disability, inclusion, and the structural mechanisms
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that produce inequity in education. And she also happens to be
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a quantitative researcher, which creates one of the tensions I wanted to
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explore in this conversation, because Rebecca has written a book criticizing
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the legacy of the Bell Curve while regularly using statistics.
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Regularly? That's such a hard word to say for me. Let's say it again.
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Regularly. Well, I don't know. I'm gonna need, like, hundred takes
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to do that, right? Anyway, so naturally, I had to ask Rebecca,
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aren't you sleeping with the enemy? But she is no Julia Roberts.
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Sorry if you did not get the now antique pop culture reference,
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but you can check the movie. Okay, maybe not exactly in those words.
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I didn't ask if she was sleeping with an enemy. But the question is still
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important. If statistics, measurement, classification,
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and ideas about the average have historically been used to sort children's
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rank, intelligence, define normality, and justify exclusion,
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can we use those tools, the same tools,
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to expose inequity or fix inequity?
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Can statistics help us dismantle systems that statistics
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once helped build? Or do some of our assumptions
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embedded in our methods keep hunting us, even when our intentions
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are completely different? That tension ran throughout
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our conversation. We talk about the history of the Bell Curve thinking
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and why the problem is not simply a mathematical curve sitting in sleep innocently
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in a statistical textbook. It is what happens when we
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turn that distribution into a story about human beings. When the
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average becomes a norm that is reinforced,
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and when being farther away from that average starts becoming evidence
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that something is wrong with you. That may sound like an old
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idea, something we left somewhere in the early 20th centuries,
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parked next to eugenics, phrenology, and medical treatments that
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probably involve far too much electricity to my taste. But Rebecca
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and Allison's argument is that these ideas continue to shape contemporary
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schooling. They appear in how we measure students, how we identify disabilities,
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how we group children, how we interpret achievement, how we explain differences,
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and ultimately in who gets access to particular
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educational opportunities. That is why the ghost
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metaphor works so well. The ghost is not necessarily
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a sampling we can see. Sometimes it is an assumption that has
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become so familiar that we no longer notice it.
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And honestly, those are the scariest ghosts.
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At least with a normal ghost you hear change and things like boo.
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Maybe the lights flicker, maybe somebody writes get out on the wall. Very clear
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communication. But this is not the case for the Bell Curve.
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In the interview, Rebecca and I also wrestled with questions about
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ableism and racism and about why education sorting cannot be understood
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by looking at dis in isolation. We talk about disproportionality in
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special education and discipline, the historical roots of our current system,
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and how seemingly neutral practices can reproduce
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very unequal outcomes. And importantly, the book
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does not stop at saying everything is ableist.
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Good luck. Rebecca and Allison also asked what different educational
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system could look like, one that does not begin by sorting students
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according to their distance from some imagined average, but instead starts
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from the assumption that human variability is There
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is another tension here that I really like, because criticizing measurement
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is relatively easy. I have done it myself, usually after
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receiving my evaluation score for the GRE or my grades in
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high school. But schools still have to make decisions.
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Researchers still need evidence. Policymakers still need information.
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Teachers still need to know whether what they're doing is working.
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So the question becomes not so simply should we measure,
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but actually, what are we measuring? Why are we
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measuring? What assumptions are built into the measurement?
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And what do we do with the results that take us
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into the world of critical quantitative research on concrete the idea that numbers are
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not automatically neutral simply because they contain decimal
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points, which is disappointing. I personally have Always tried anything
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that has at least three numbers after the decimal, particularly if that's
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on my paycheck. It just looks scientific.
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But Rebecca pushes us to think about how quantitative tools
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can be used differently, not simply to locate deficits within students, but to examine
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the system contexts, and structures producing an equal outcome.
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So, yes, this is our Halloween episode. There are ghosts.
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There are disturbing historical practices. There are ideas that refuse
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to die. There is a bell curve lurking in the background, and there
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are statistics. Honestly, that last one may be the scariest part for some of you,
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but the largest question to ask is one that sits right at the heart
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of this season of Dive in. What would education look like if we
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stop evidence of deficiency,
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and how much of the old system we'll have to rethink to
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actually get there? So turn off the lights,
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check under the bed, make sure there are no standardizing tips
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hiding in the closet, and whatever you do, do not calculate the mean. Are you
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ready? Let's dive in. To my conversation with Rebecca Cruz
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about the ghost of the bell curve.
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Thank you, Rebecca, for being with us on the show. It's a pleasure to have
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you here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have the
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conversation. Yeah, we'll invite you over. I know you
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and Allison has a book coming up, but before we get into that,
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I want to start with the same question that I've been posing to all
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of our interviews in this Inclusive Education series, which is,
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what does inclusive education mean to you? It seems like people sometimes
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think they're talking about the same thing, but they're slightly.
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They have slightly different meanings. What does it mean to you?
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This is such a great opening question, I think. You know,
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I've been listening to all of the other interviews in the series and seeing what
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other people have answered. And I have a colleague at Hopkins and I that are
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doing a big sort of ethnographic study right now, and one
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of the districts over here where we are actually asking teachers,
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what do you think inclusion is? And kind of probing to get a sense of
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how they actually make meaning of that term? And I think you would be shocked
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at how different all of our collective interpretations of
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that word actually is. And I think that for me right now, as I sort
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of pondered this question, I'm kind of ready to reject the whole term altogether
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as a construct. I think that you're been thinking a lot about, like,
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I started teaching way back in 2005,
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which feels like a really long time ago now. So I taught
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in the classroom for ipods. There. Right. We listen to music with these little things
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that we put our MP3 on it. I still have one. Yeah, it's like
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this little green. Like the minis. Yeah, we have the mini ipod. I remember that.
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Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I probably bought that in, like, I was seven. Yeah.
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So thanks for that. Yeah. So I
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taught in the classroom for a lot more years than I think a lot of
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my scholar colleagues did. I was in the classroom for like 15 years before I
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went into research. And I started out working in a program that
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up until very recently was called the Severe Handicap
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program. Like, it. It is a shockingly late time in
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the progression that they finally changed that name to something that's more
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appropriate. But whatever label they've chosen now still sort of
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applies this idea of who those kids are, ability wise.
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Right. And in that work, I was teaching in one of the most restrictive settings
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that you could be in, aside from, like, being put in a totally different school.
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So they were with me all day, every day. And in that work,
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I tried a lot to build these inclusive practices, like, how can we sort
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of just quietly move the needle so that they have some kind of access to
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anything but just my little corner of the school, Like, I had a kid who
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really wanted to do art. We approached the art teacher and we asked if
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he could take classes there. He really wanted to be an artist. And our art
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was kind of relegated to, like, holiday arts and crafts and stuff like that.
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And that teacher was like, well, yeah, you can have him here, but only
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if a paraprofessional comes with him and only if I don't have to grade
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him. Like, I want nothing to do with anything about him, but physically
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he can be here. Yes. Right. And so there were, like, these caveats to
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inclusion for that student, and that happened before that teacher even
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knew anything about him. Right. And there was just one of those examples.
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And then I sort of transitioned over to doing what was called mild
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to moderate. Right. Like another label for, like,
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signaling about what those kids in that program were and who they could become.
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And I thought that inclusion would be a lot easier in that space because
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these were kids who were less severely affected by their disabilities. And it really wasn't
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because even when my students were allowed into the general
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ed classroom, teachers were making assumptions about them just based on their paperwork.
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Right. Ended up doing a lot of co teaching with a
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really, really talented general education teacher. And it only worked
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because she was, like, willing to let me put my hand on the steering
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wheel. Right. Like, we could have this shared Space. It was set up that way
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she could trust me to stand in front of a room and deliver really good
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instruction and I could trust her to de escalate the kid, right, that needed it
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at that moment. And so. But it didn't, it didn't
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last. It wasn't sustainable because then when they went to high school,
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this was a middle school that they were like shuffled
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back into a more exclusionary space. And the district's response wasn't, let's make
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that more inclusive. It was like, let's put the kibosh on it here.
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And so it really like. As I went into the
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research space, I wanted to know a lot more about what sets up this guest
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host binary where my kids get to come into your space.
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And to me, that's what inclusion is. It's this binary where I have to
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advocate for this other group. And I, like in that process,
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thought a lot about how I was complicit in that process in
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that advocacy space. But that's how the system sets it up, right? We're brought in
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to advocate for this other group. So I'm ready
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to reject the premise altogether. So what do, if we reject it,
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what do we replace it? I don't know. My research team
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and I had this two hour conversation yesterday about rightful presence and
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how that is sort of evolving in the theoretical space and how
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I think that, like the disability studies scholars think of that as
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like, these students deserve physical presence because historically
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that precedent is what they've been fighting for. But the people who
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have been talking about that, like in the STEM space, are really talking about
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it as like, the kids are already there, but we need to reauthor their rights
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and ensure that we're pushing back against that historical precedence
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that puts that guest host binary in place. So, like the example that they use
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in the literature is sanctuary cities. You can be inclusive
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and welcoming, but it's still like, you come in here and we'll
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protect you. And that's the piece that we have to kind of push back against
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and reject. But how do you do that when your kids are physically not
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even there? Right. So that's where I land. I don't know.
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I think it really points to the
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fact that you need
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to advocate for inclusion because exclusion happens. And by
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advocating for inclusion, what I'm getting from you is like, you are,
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yes, you're too hungry to do because it's what you're.
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But at the same time you're justifying the exclusion
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in the first place because you are being part of this Game.
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If you say concost and guess that you need to
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help these guess quotation marks to get into that space.
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Right, exactly. And I felt like in that role,
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you know, because the structure is set up like the special educator
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is the advocate who works against all of this gatekeeping,
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you end up complicit in that process. And so,
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yeah, that's really just where I land. I just think that the way that we've
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set up the entire structure creates this landscape
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for us to have had 50 years worth of arguments about where
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kids should be served. And I don't think that's productive anymore. Yeah.
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And that kind of. Take us to your new book. You have a new book
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coming out with Alison Firestone, by the way, who she completely chickened
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out to this interview. Hopefully she doesn't get upset. We say
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that, but if she does, she really did. If she would have been here,
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she would have been able to defend herself. That's right. She's not
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here. We'll send a hi to Alison.
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But you wrote with her a book titled the Ghost
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of the Belt Uplism in American Education, An Agenda for
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Change. So my first question related to that is why
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is that title, why the Ghost? Is this being released on Halloween day?
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Just to make it more theme wise. And what
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is this ghost hunting? Actually such a
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big, big, big question that you're asking, but an important one. Right. So Allison actually.
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And yes, I wish she had been brave enough to show up here,
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so I will just speak for her in the meantime. She actually
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works in the policy space for a district and I work much more in the
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research space at this point, although we both do a lot of research. But my
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work has become really theoretical in the
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sense that, you know, I really wanted to understand things like
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if we say that separate is never equal, we have a
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legal precedent for that. Why is this group not. Why does that not
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apply to this group? Right. And we have a whole different legal precedent for that
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group that shifts the narrative from separate isn't equal to
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least restrictive environment. There is like a policy tension with
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that. Allison's work is really applied. Right. Like, we need to make sure that these
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theories and practices are transmitting into places where these changes can
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occur. And so the first half of the book is trying to understand where we
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actually came from and arrived here in this
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current model of special education that we have. And the second half was
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really kind of driven by her ideas of like, well, if we were going to
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think about this completely radical shift in how we approach service
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delivery, because neither of us Were willing to say the answer
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is like, eliminate special ed. Right? Get rid of idea. Those are not, that's not
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what we're advocating for in this book. But we are advocating for.
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We need to move past these incremental shifts. We need like
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a radical rethinking of how we support students and how we
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apply like good teaching to a wide range of variability in
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classrooms. And so the Bell curve is this
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like sort of tacit assumption that normativity
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in schools doesn't influence these decisions about where kids get
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placed and what their trajectories end up being. Like one of the opening vignettes
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that I use in the book is way back when I was an intern and
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I was doing a triennial assessment with a student, which is the three
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year assessment where we re evaluate whether they still qualify for special education.
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And the school psychologist had no knowledge of this kid outside of
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the tests that they did. Right. They did like an IQ test. And based on
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that one number, he kept saying in this IEP meeting, like school's
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always going to be hard for him. And I was sitting there as this young
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intern, like I can't challenge this guy, right? But school isn't
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hard for this kid. He's doing great, he's making progress, he has friends, he's part
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of a community. Where are you getting this idea? And I think that
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a lot of people don't necessarily realize that
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that mechanism that that school psychologist was using is a eugenic
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based logic that happened at the turn of the century that we were trying
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like, that they came up with this like bell curve to measurability and
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that that concept we like to assume has sort of like
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littered away in the ether. And it doesn't influence us
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now, but it actually is really impactful in a lot of our social systems,
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especially our schools. And so that's like the haunting is that
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it keeps coming up and influencing how schools or how students experience
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school. Ah. So so help
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us to, to, to, to tease that out because it's like the Bell Curve is
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such a big statistic tool too. Right? And a lot
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of people use it in everyday statistics. Right? So what would you tell those people?
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It's just like, is it still hunting when you use
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it? I mean, you're a statistician too. You have done a lot of statistical analysis.
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You use the bulk or many of your assumptions. Right. As a statistician.
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You know, it's funny, I was worried you were gonna ask me to come
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and talk on the, during the disproportionality series. Because,
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like, I'm ready to put that part of my career away.
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Like, I didn't wanna continue my career in this, like, really charged
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argument. And then I sort of just meandered into this new really charged argument.
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Charged argument, yeah. But the reason I became a methodologist
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in general in the first place was because of that problem.
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Like, how do these mathematicians come
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up with a result in their research that is so discrepant
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from my experiences in the classroom? I needed to understand the process.
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And I think that it fundamentally comes down to we
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just don't have a shared definition of what disability even is. Right.
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Like, they're using a lot of those scholars.
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Like, if you're coded as a one in the data, that means you have
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an IEP and therefore you have a disability. And that that's something real that we
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can measure inside of a student. I don't see disability
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that way. I don't think that it's this reality that we can,
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like, all objectively see in a student. I also don't think it's this tragedy
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that students live. Right. I think that a lot of ableism assumptions
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are from, like, I think that disability is this big tragedy.
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And my students, I don't think, experienced it that way. I don't experience it
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that way. And so there's this, I guess, tension between how
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we measure people, how we understand what we can
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measure and what we can make sense of out of those measures. And is
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it something real? And I think that in the special education,
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you can think of these bell curve distributions as making
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sense when I want to understand a big group, but the minute I want to
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understand a person, it's useless. And that's the tension.
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That's the distinction. You know that.
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That's very interesting. And I'm talking that kind of. Take me.
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No, take me to. There's a part of the book that I really like because
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it kind of, kind of defines the book. You know, it's a section called what
21:26
is this book not? And I should do a whole
21:30
podcast episode about what is this podcast not? And the other thing would be very
21:34
funny and more entertaining than what I do usually. But you
21:40
are arguing about thorough things there. You are actually saying that you are
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not arguing for the elimination of special education expertise. You cannot
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just say that. A few minutes ago, you acknowledge that some students may require high
21:52
individualized support. You reject inclusion that
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produces physical proximity without meaningful learning.
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So how do you reconcile those acknowledgements
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with the book argument for inclusive education, how you
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can push for inclusive education while at the Same time
22:13
acknowledging that we need specialized services,
22:17
we need sometimes intensive instruction. I mean, this has been a big
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tension with the history of inclusive education and the
22:25
arguments from disability studies scholars kind of totally trying
22:29
to push back on the area of like, on the idea of
22:34
expertise and specialization and intensive intervention. But you kind
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of acknowledge that that could be. That is not exclusive,
22:42
I guess, from having an inclusive
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classroom. Yeah. And I've been thinking a lot about this
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when I listened to some of the other participants for this series
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and how sometimes this argument gets framed as like the full
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inclusionists and then like the segregationists or whatever,
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you know, this sort of like we need all or nothing.
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And if you're over and evil Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker,
23:09
it's. I mean, it's kind of like, I guess, taken up this
23:13
political bent where it gets talked about like that. And like, I think
23:16
that like I was reading some of James Kaufman's work
23:20
where he had kind of like called those who are over here in the full
23:24
inclusion movement Pollyannas. And like, it's just not realistic. And I.
23:29
And then assuming that that means that people who think we can have a lot
23:33
more inclusive practices and that students can access meaningful learning in those
23:37
spaces are trying somehow to advocate that we just
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need belonging. Right. Like, if they're just there and part of the community and we
23:45
celebrate differences, then that's somehow okay. Or that we're
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saying there are no differences. Right. I think those are both false flags.
23:53
Like, I think those are not that. Those are straw mans. Like, that's not how
23:56
we are actually communicating this work. I think
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that my experience then, I believe is kind of
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backed up by the research that we have in the book was. I was a
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co teacher once in that middle school that I worked at and I had this
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amazing, amazing experience. And we had every single grade level
24:16
represented in that classroom, from like pre K readers to like 12th
24:20
grade readers. Every single grade was there. And it was,
24:25
it. It was hard. It took a lot of work. But every single student moved
24:29
forward. They all made tremendous growth. I've seen it in action.
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And I just don't think that. Yeah,
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one of your. The questions that you sent me, I may be losing the thread
24:39
here a little bit, but was how is this book saying
24:43
something different? And I don't necessarily think that we are. I think that we're coalescing
24:48
a lot of research. Like, your work on cross pollinating UDL
24:51
and CRP was a huge foundation to how we can think about variability
24:56
differently in the classroom. And if we start from that premise. Then we also
25:00
can move services instead of moving students. And that there
25:04
is like a cost, like it's a rising tide lifts all boats kind of thing
25:08
at that point. Yeah, that was working. Yeah. We have
25:12
definitely different perspectives in the show. And you
25:16
know, I think at some point there were two camps.
25:20
I think there was probably 20 something years ago and I mentioned
25:24
this, I think with our interview with Doug, that I think there,
25:29
there is a new generation of people that are trying to.
25:33
To think through those two polars
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and come up with new solutions that, that which is very cool, I think.
25:40
And I think in part your. Your book is trying. Trying to do that too.
25:45
No, we have some people say like, you know,
25:48
I have great conversation with Doc Fuchs and one of the things he says is
25:53
like, they're always going to need a separate setting. Right. The Doc's argument
25:57
is we need the lre. There is no way that general education
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classroom can serve the students the general classroom never
26:05
had, which in part is right. And it's an
26:08
utopian thinking that the general education classroom can serve
26:12
every single need and include every single student. It has a poor reputation,
26:16
which is true. So how do you report
26:20
to that statement? Do you think sometimes separate classrooms are needed?
26:25
I think that there are two facets to that question that are important
26:29
to unpack. And one is, is there ever an instance
26:33
where a student's needs really just can't be met in gen ed, even if we
26:36
put a lot of supports and resources there? And I would say
26:40
to that, in my view, in my experience, very rarely.
26:44
Right. I did. I had worked with a couple of students who were like medically
26:47
fragile. You know, it would have been really dangerous for them to be in big
26:51
crowds, maybe. Right. But for the most part, it's a lot
26:55
more students that can be served there than currently are. Even though we've
26:59
made a lot of progress towards shifting more kids to lrea.
27:03
Right. Like they're spending 80% of their time there's. It's just my experience that
27:08
we can make huge progress if we do it correctly.
27:11
And then the other thing I think that needs to be unpacked with that question
27:15
is that kind of assumes either that this student isn't going
27:19
to make progress so we're going to move them out so that they're not a
27:21
problem for the gen Ed group and they're just going to not make progress and
27:25
we accept that, or we can actually do something
27:29
to help them in that segregated setting. And there is definitely not
27:33
good evidence that that is happening. Right. I think that more likely we're seeing
27:37
things like there's no instruction going on in those segregated settings.
27:41
It's not even really like we have these major teacher shortages.
27:45
And I contend that that's partly because the job is impossible,
27:48
especially if you're shuffled into a room by yourself with 10 kids
27:53
who have really extensive needs and you don't have a community around you that's supporting
27:57
that. And so the assumption that they're getting something
28:01
better over here is this hegemonic piece of special ed that I think is really
28:05
dangerous but very common. And then the assumption that they can't
28:09
make progress over here if we improved here is just not true.
28:13
That's how I see it. Need to improve over
28:16
here. I'm not going to say that's not true.
28:20
Yeah. And you say something about teachers
28:25
that do not have the resources right to do that.
28:29
And sometimes we put them on those places and it kind of becomes a
28:33
self fulfilling prophecy in the sense of we fight for inclusion, reclusive location,
28:37
but we ended up having places that are not ready for it,
28:40
ended up failing. And then of course, because it fails, it justifies,
28:44
well, this is not working. Right. So how do
28:48
we prevent that, this like, idea of inclusive education from
28:54
becoming another ambitious ideal that teachers are expected to implement without the resources necessary
28:58
to make it meaningful and end up failing? And again, justifying the
29:03
idea that inclusive education doesn't work. We need support setting.
29:07
Yeah. I think that that's why the whole second half of the book really
29:11
outlines these big, huge systemic issues that need to
29:15
be addressed in order for this to work. It isn't just a matter of training
29:18
our teachers better or throwing them in the room and hoping that
29:22
it works out. Right. It's that like the entire system is set up from
29:26
top to bottom to make it more difficult than it needs to be. So for
29:30
instance, we talked about like how even the research landscape operates in this binary.
29:34
We've got special ed journals and general ed journals, and if those don't speak to
29:38
each other, then we're not coming up with shared supports and services and
29:42
ideas about students that work for everybody.
29:46
Right. And so that's one piece. Right. And if we have policies that
29:50
codify segregation like IDEA does,
29:54
I mean, one of the pieces that we write earlier in the book is about
29:58
how idea came about from this social movement where kids
30:03
who were had disabilities were like in completely different schools.
30:06
And it took this like advocacy and social movement to get this
30:10
law so that we had rights for students.
30:14
But therein that law is like, you know, you only qualify
30:18
for those supports and services if you have this imperfect ability to think,
30:22
what is that? Right. So I'm kind of
30:26
going in a circle here, but I guess I think that the infrastructure
30:29
as a whole has to change from that. Like law and
30:33
policy and the way that states and districts interpret and enact it
30:37
and then the supports that they give to teachers on the ground, it's gotta
30:42
be a holistic thing. It can't just be like, let's go to some classrooms and
30:46
make them work. So I'm excited to listen to Jamie Basham talk about because I
30:50
know that like his work is really like, when you get into that room,
30:53
what does that look like? And I think that's really important piece too.
30:57
But the structures around that room have to be in place too.
31:00
Yeah, we need the structures and also the capacity to
31:04
design learning environments with universally
31:09
designed apt for all kinds of learners. Right. And how we
31:12
train teachers to really think about activity design,
31:16
learning activity design, and not think about
31:20
lesson planning that much, but think about more about learning like an activity
31:24
with multiple entry points. And that's, you know, things that also
31:28
need to change. You know, I always say we need to do a mea culpa
31:32
also in the university of how sometimes how we train teachers in
31:36
separate ways. And also without having that idea
31:40
of design teacher as a designer of an
31:44
activity, almost like a design of a game. Right.
31:47
Where multiple players are going to be playing together to
31:51
do something. Right. And that they shouldn't have to do that design
31:55
alone. Right. I think that in the work that I've done, it worked really well.
31:58
If I could get up in front of a classroom with 40 kids in it
32:02
and deliver a really good lesson and she could help deescalate
32:06
the student who really needed supports in that moment. Because I was teaching right.
32:09
As I was a special educator, we both had to have that skill set.
32:13
It took a team. So I just don't think that
32:17
our idea is shove everyone in one room and assume that
32:21
that's going to work. It hasn't.
32:25
So this is the moment that you get to sell the book to different audiences.
32:28
So my first question on that is disability
32:33
studies in education. Scholars have long criticized the medical model, ability based sorting
32:38
deficit thinking, and the segregation produced by special
32:42
education as separate system. So how does your framework of critical inclusion
32:47
extend, revise or perhaps challenge some of those traditional
32:51
arguments from disability studies? In other words, if I'm like a traditional
32:54
disability study person, why should I read your book? Yeah,
32:59
well, I think that what makes it critical is that we can reject this idea
33:03
that we have an average lump in the middle and
33:07
then people at the tails. We don't need that idea for schools to be
33:11
meaningful sites of learning for everybody. And I think that
33:15
that's why it really builds on and extends critical disability scholars work.
33:20
So I think like, is your question how
33:24
does this speak to a bunch of different audiences? Or is it how do we
33:27
extend that argument beyond the medical model?
33:31
How do you extend the work that has been done by disability
33:35
studies in education scholars throughout the last two
33:39
decades? Yeah, I mean, we definitely talk a lot about the
33:43
medical model and where that came from. And really
33:47
I think importantly these interchanges between ableism and other
33:51
forms of oppression which the roots of that medical model sought
33:56
to create. Right. So we talk about like the ableism racism interchange.
34:00
A lot of Subani Anima's work that's looking at discrit and how those things
34:03
were. They were co constructed. And that really is true. But there are
34:07
also a lot of historical other forms of oppression that interact with Ableism.
34:12
There's really this all pervasive historical precedent that we've
34:16
never shaken. So I think naming that was really important for us.
34:20
But then also talking about our current special education law
34:23
idea is an amalgamation between the medical model
34:28
and the social model because it's meant to support and help.
34:31
But in order to qualify for that help,
34:35
you have to have these deficits that we've defined.
34:38
So it's this weird sort of Frankenstein model that is
34:42
where we've landed in today's schools. That is I think, keeping us in this suspended
34:46
space of should we include, should we not include?
34:49
And that's what we're trying to get past in this work. Can't move
34:53
in that binary. Right, right. Include or not include.
34:57
Now imagine the opposite readers and see how you sell the
35:02
book to them. Imagine someone who believes that students with disabilities
35:06
are better served in separate settings because, you know, they can have
35:10
intensive interventions, because they can interact and develop relationships with peers
35:15
like them, and because it's more a safer space that
35:18
the general education classroom has been. So you gotta
35:22
read it like that. How would you why that reader should read your
35:26
book? So I think that that reader who maybe thinks
35:30
that segregated settings are better could read this
35:34
and maybe imagine what it could look like to have a different kind
35:38
of model. Right. I don't necessarily think that we are going
35:42
to convince people who, yes, you would be shocked to
35:46
hear still exist that think that there are genetic, like racialized
35:51
genetic differences in intellect. Right. Like, I was just reading a paper that was published
35:55
in 2022 that is like the gaps between gifted
35:59
ed. You know, there are fewer black kids in gifted ed because there's like a
36:03
genetic reason for that. That is that like ghost
36:07
of the bell curve that is like perfect and still very much alive
36:11
in research that I completely reject that. Right. I don't
36:14
think we're going to convince that reader, but I do hope that we convince readers
36:19
who think special education is, like, constructed as this universal
36:24
benefit where we're supporting all kids and helping them to think.
36:27
Like, is that really actually the case or could
36:32
we imagine a different future where these kids are actually supported
36:36
and served in more inclusive settings where they don't have to just get to know
36:40
kids like them, whatever that means? Right. They can get to know a whole community
36:43
of kids and we can all sort of learn together in community. That's how I
36:47
see it. So I don't know if we'll convince that group,
36:50
but it was worth a shot. We're trying. We're trying. You know, we're selling.
36:54
I take a 20% of the commission of the book because of this question.
36:57
I'm making you sell. Making you sell the book. Actually, I'm probably
37:01
20. In my experience with academic books, the 20% of a book sells
37:05
was probably like 20 cents. But although you
37:09
have better luck than my book, probably your books are going to sell mine.
37:13
I got probably a lunch at the supermarket. Take it.
37:16
Yeah, my mom said she bought it, but she was like, I'm not going to
37:23
I give mine to my mom. I was a better son than you. You were
37:27
a daughter. I gifted my book to my mom. I told her I'd give it
37:31
to her, but she was like, no, no, no. I want Amazon to know I
37:34
bought it. So in this vision that you were
37:37
just portraying, what do you think the role special education is? Does special education
37:42
has a role in that vision? Yeah. I mean, I keep coming back to this
37:46
co teaching example because for me it was so powerful. Right. I was a special
37:50
educator in that space. But if you asked the students,
37:54
they wouldn't probably have been able to tell you that. And I'm
37:58
not saying, like, you should be able to go into a classroom and not know,
38:02
not see any difference. Right. That's not how I'm trying to
38:05
portray this. It's more like I came into that role and that general
38:10
educator had some really good, genuine questions
38:14
about how we bring a lot of different access points into our pedagogical
38:18
process that I was Able to bring expertise and help her
38:22
with that. And it. We both brought a lot of different kinds of
38:27
ideas about what kinds of, like, what students strengths
38:31
were and how we could really capitalize on those strengths. And so I
38:35
think that in my, like, like ideal world,
38:38
reframing of special education, it would be less like,
38:41
I'm the person who knows about this problem that a student might
38:45
have and more I can look at this learning objective
38:49
and see all of the different ways that we can craft entry points into
38:53
that rigorous learning objective. So it's a pedagogical expertise
38:58
as opposed to like a deficits expertise, which is, I think, kind of how.
39:01
Not in so many words, but that's kind of how it's framed now, right?
39:05
Like, you take these classes in our special education certification
39:08
program and you're taking like, what are the characteristics of disabilities? And we've got
39:12
like a disability of the week, like, here's what you do for kids with autism.
39:16
That is not how I would see this working in like an ideal
39:20
perfect world. More like a support on
39:24
instructional design for inclusion. Right. And a
39:28
co teacher on the instructional design. And I
39:32
believe all students will benefit from that, not just those students
39:37
that are identified with disabilities or are within the special education realm.
39:42
So our last question, what was finished with this question is about dreaming
39:46
and hoping. So if the ideas
39:49
of this book gain real traction, what would you hope teaching
39:53
and learning for students with disabilities would look like in five
39:58
to ten years from now? I mean, I'm glad we're ending on like,
40:02
a note of hope because it's so hard right now in this particular
40:06
moment when, you know, we're talking about moving idea
40:10
under the purview of hhs, which is being led by one of the most ablest
40:14
guys on the planet. Right. Somebody who doesn't even think autism should exist is
40:19
kind of problematic. Like, it feels like we're going backwards. Yeah,
40:23
keep talking. Like, when I talk about what I think the first
40:26
step in this process would be, well, it's probably not
40:30
getting rid of idea. To be clear, I want to keep emphasizing that point,
40:35
but it would be reauthorizing it. Right. It hasn't been reauthorized
40:39
in a really long time. It's long past due. And there are ways that we
40:43
could start with that original law and make it more
40:47
geared towards that vision of, like, special educators or
40:51
these pedagogical experts that can come in and help with the
40:54
design part of the work. And I keep
40:58
coming, getting like, responses of like, oh, they're never going to do that. Like,
41:02
yeah, maybe not right now, but right. If we lay the groundwork right now,
41:06
we have things like this book to say. There could be this big
41:10
new radical imagining of how we serve students,
41:13
not just those with disabilities, but all students,
41:16
so that we have schools that support their
41:20
learning and their access into rigorous, meaningful instruction that's responsive,
41:24
that's relevant to them, that speaks to their lived experiences.
41:28
Then we could be in a much better place with our nation's
41:32
schools. So Ian's kind of no.
41:36
I love the idea. I don't know if I want idea Routh Rice with this
41:40
Congress, but, you know, that's a whole different conversation. I will be giving a little
41:43
bit of the creeps if they decide to reauthorize Ida
41:47
right now. I wouldn't trust that. But let's. Let's. Let's hope in
41:51
the future we'll have a better reauthorization of
41:55
idea. So, again, your book title of the Ghost of the Belt, A Blasphem
42:00
in American Education, An Agenda for Change. Last final words.
42:04
What would you like to highlight from the book? Before we went that far,
42:07
there's a lot of different concepts in it. I like to think there's a little
42:11
something for everybody. So if you're interested in how schools
42:14
might be able to work from a more inclusive standpoint, check it out. I think
42:18
there's a lot of historical elements that kind of lead up to what we're trying
42:22
to talk about. So if you're into history and you want to know how we
42:25
got here, check it out. And yeah, really just excited to put it
42:29
out in the world and see how it lands. All right, people, check it out.
42:32
This is again, the book the Ghost of the Bell, A Blazume
42:37
in American Education and Agenda for Change. And this, we would say this is part
42:40
of the new series of Alfredo Ortillas in Harvard Education Review.
42:43
So kudos to him, too. Congratulations on the book. Thank you for being on the
42:47
show. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
42:54
Thank you for listening to Diver. I hope
42:58
you learned from this episode. I much as I did. Please help us to spread
43:02
the word about the show. See you next time.