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The Disproportionality Series: Is Policy Compliance Enough to Address Disproportionality? · 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 Children,
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this is Dive In. I am your host, Federico Weitholer,
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professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to the seventh episode of the third season
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of Dive in. Today we will discuss one of the most controversial
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issues in special education. When one think of inequities in special education,
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one of the first terms that come to mind is disproportionality,
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that is the under or over representation of racial and linguistic
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minority students in special education services.
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Today we will delve into this rabbit hole.
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What is it? What does idea after 50 years
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require to states to do about it? And what are the states doing about
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it? And more importantly, what can state and school administrations can
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do to address it? And to delve into this complex issue, I invited
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Katherine Bulgaris. She's an assistant professor at Hunter College.
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She investigates the factors contributing to racial disparities in special
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education through a systems lens, focusing on policy compliance.
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She is the author of the upcoming book Beyond Compliance
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Reclaiming Agency in Special Education by Harvard Education Press.
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I will put a link on the description of the show so
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you can access the book if you are interested. Okay, here's the disclaimer.
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There has been a standing and heated debate over whether racial
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minorities are over or underrepresented in special education.
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This is a sensitive and hot topic. Believe me, I've been
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in academic conferences and it gets pretty heated when it gets
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to debate this issue of the representation about these issues.
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We won't get into these controversies whether racial
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minorities are over underrepresented in this show. We'll do it
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later in another show that we will focus entirely on that
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particular question. This episode will focus more on state
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responses, meaning how
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the policy aspects of disproportionate representation plays out
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in practice, how states respond to this legal framework.
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This is a critical issue considering the recent moves of the current
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administration to relocate the Office of Special Education to
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the Department of Health and Human Services, which may weaken efforts to keep states
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accountable for addressing this proportional representation. Are you ready?
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Let's dive in.
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Hello Katherine. Thank you for being with us today. It's been a pleasure. I know
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you've been doing a lot of work and examining this proportionality
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at the national level. So want to have you here to ask you some questions
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how that looks like particularly I think, how states responds
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to this issue. So I wanted to
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welcome you and I'm going to start just right up with the first question so
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we have a common understanding. We what is disproportionate education. I know people
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sometimes get confused because you can talk about lre, like how
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disproportional plays in different educational environments could be disciplinary measures,
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could be identification. So help us to understand. Welcome.
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Again, help us to understand what is disproportionality in a special education.
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Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be able to share about
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the projects I've been working on and my body of work and the way that
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I've kind of always thought about disproportionality is very much tied to
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the regulatory landscape around idea. But I would say that generally
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disproportionality is really something that isn't symptomatic of a single
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school, a single district, a single state. It's a nationwide problem,
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and it really is a systemic problem that is embedded within the entire
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educational ecosystem. And it's been tracked since we
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first had large scale studies that could measure disparities in education.
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So Lloyd Dunn in 1968 was one of the first kind
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of scholars to point out there's an inequ across special education,
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in particular around black students. And the historically
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rooted nature of this inequity has persisted over time
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and has just manifested and kind of morphed into different categories.
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It depends on, you know,
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around intellectual disability, there could be disproportionality.
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Around emotional behavior disorders. There's lots of different areas where
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racial and disability inequities can manifest. But in the most basic
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sense, it's really this over or under representation
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of a particular group in a specific disability category
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setting or in a disciplinary outcome. And it's really
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looking at the intersection of race and disability. For my work within
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the regulatory landscape around the Individuals with Disabilities Education act
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or idea, and one of the things that I just want to
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highlight now is I think that disproportionality is incredibly important to
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think about in this time and space because we are celebrating
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Idea at 50, a landmark legislation which has
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really shifted the landscape. But as we look at outcomes for all
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students, we continue to see persistent disparities, and particularly
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around racial and disability inequities, linguistic and disability
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inequities. And so we really need to think about what is it about idea,
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what is it about the regulatory landscape, the monitoring that has not
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been able to address the systemic inequity that has persisted for decades.
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So let's see if we can make a quick scenario.
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It could be under and over, meaning there will be more proportions that
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there needs to be a certain kinds of students in special education. Or certain proportion
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experience in disciplinary missions that are higher than what we
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expected and maybe also higher proportion of students in
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more segregated educational environments that we would expect according
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to some larger education parameters. Is that that kind of.
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Yeah, and it's, you know, disproportionality. It's always kind of been,
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it's hard to measure. But what's typically. And we'll, you know, we'll get into this
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when we talk about the monitoring landscape, but it's really, you have this kind
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of set standard in policy and that can always be a debatable standard.
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But it's thinking about like what's the risk of a child, a student
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of being classified, placed in special education or disciplined.
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And what we see is that that risk can be much higher
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for particular groups over others, especially black and native students in the United States.
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And then, you know, there's underrepresentation, things like gifted and talented
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programs. We don't see oftentimes proportion or parity or
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equity within whose actually has access to high
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quality educational environments. And so just that's where disproportionality kind of sits
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in this over and under space of access to or lack of access to
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educational opportunity. And that takes me kind of our next question is
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like, why does it matter? I mean there are more than less. I mean there
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may be some more kids with certain disabilities in some areas right. In the state
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of Louisiana. So why does it matter?
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I think it matters. Again, going back to that idea at 50,
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when IDA was passed, and it completely,
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as I said before, it changed the landscape of schooling in the United States.
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And you would hope in the
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essence of the legislation, which is civil rights based,
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that every child has access to high quality educational services and
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supports. But like I said prior to even the passage
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of the Education for All Handicapped Children act, which later became Ida
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Lloyd Dunn in 1968, noticed that there were racial
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disparities in special education. So we had this law, we had this legislation
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come about and these disparities have never
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gone away. And one of the reasons why it's
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impactful is because when you think of long term outcomes for students with disabilities,
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if they're not getting high quality services, it can impact
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their graduation rates, it can impact the quality
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or access to jobs in the labor market.
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Higher education, there's a whole host of things that if you are within
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classroom settings or if you are pushed out of school through disciplinary
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measures, that you're not going to get the same access and opportunity as others.
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And again, this has typically been racialized and you'll see disparities
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in categories like autism, starts to have one type of
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students, racial group over another, emotional behavior disorders, learning disabilities,
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you'll see these disparities. And so it really matters
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when you think about the long term outcomes and the connections to those outcomes with
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the specific label that you are given within a school setting.
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And yeah, because if you are underrepresented, what I understand is
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that you may not get the services you need if you're over. If you may
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be in a special education, I should be there. You should be. You maybe you
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are going to an educational setting or having some educational experiences that may,
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you didn't need to, you just needed to have good quality
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early opportunities to learn, right? Yeah. And I think like this is really
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where my work has been focused from the get go, is really understanding
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why there's this disjuncture between the, the promise of equal
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educational opportunity through IDEA and then historic inequities
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in special education and really seeing how firsthand
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how policy and IDEA in particular, and how educational systems can both
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support and marginalize students at the intersection of race and disability.
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And so I've been exploring this for decades,
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really or a decade plus, just really thinking about this core question of does
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compliance matter with IDEA in the pursuit of equity? Because we
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have so many educators, so many parents, so many caregivers engaging with
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the special education system, trying to give the best educational opportunity
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to students or their children, yet something keeps on running awry in
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terms of why we can't get the outcomes that we need
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and equity for all students. So I think it's very important
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to think about the regulatory and monitoring landscape in particular,
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because, you know, since disproportionality
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is so complex and it's related to so many,
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you know, interrelated factors of lack of educational opportunity,
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teacher and student relationships, you could have leadership attrition
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within schools. There's, there's so many systemic factors that contribute to
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it that we really need to think about. Like what's the theory of change that's
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behind the regulatory environment or behind monitoring around this because
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it has not been able to mitigate or get,
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you know, address the inequity that has been around for decades.
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You know, that brings me, I think, to my other question because
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my understanding is like Protestants, nclb, right.
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States have been required to report significant disproportionality.
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And then if they do find themselves, right,
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it's kind of a funny thing because they need to find themselves having significant disproportionality.
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And I think you may Talk about this, but we know
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that in the early years, maybe continues, you're going to tell us today, but states
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have huge high, or what is it called, benchmarks to be significantly
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disproportionate. But if they did, they needed to
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come up with a plan to address it. Right. So I know you've been researching
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this topic. Can you tell us a little bit, has that changed and how
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are districts now trying to address disproportionality? Have that change over time?
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What have you seen? Great question. So I think
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that from the inception of the EAH ea,
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since the inception of the regulatory framework around special education,
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there's always kind of been this moral and ethical impetus to say,
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are students with disabilities receiving what
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they should be receiving in the least restrictive environment, free and appropriate public education?
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But coupled with that, you have this really technical element where as
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we're mentioning, how do we capture inequity?
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Right. And so there's these tensions between this moral,
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ethical and technical component. And when IDA was
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first passed, it was really compliance based around watching and understanding our
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states and districts doing what they need to do. And this did not
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work. It did not change outcomes for students with disabilities. So come the 1990s
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into the 2000s, the Office of Special Education Programs,
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or OSEP, really started to think about continuous improvement monitoring.
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And it started to give us the framework that we're working within now, which is
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the state performance plan, annual Performance Report indicators,
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where there's this balance of trying to think about how do we comply
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with ida while also thinking about results based accountability.
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And so there's this Results Driven Accountability, or RDA
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framework that OSEP currently has been operating on that links
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compliance, IDA compliance with student outreach outcomes. But the issue
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is when you are within the United States, you have educational federalism
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where the federal government can only tell states to do so much.
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And then this is where it's really tricky when you're regulating
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or thinking about monitoring. Something like disproportionality is
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that states can determine, as I mentioned earlier, like what
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is the threshold through which an acceptable amount of equity or inequity
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is present. And so there are some states that can set very
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high metrics where you're not going to get a lot of districts that are going
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to be identified as having significant disproportionality. And then there's other
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states that will set a much lower threshold and then have more intensive processes
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coming in. And so since 2013, there was a US Government Accountability Office
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USGAO report that noted that there's
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These high disparities across the country because of the
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capacity for states. Right. Because that's what's built into our educational system.
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States can decide how they do certain things. There's incredible
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variation in how many districts are identified as having racial and disability
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disparities. And then coupled with that, you will find
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no reporting along the indicators that measure racial
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disproportionality of non compliance with idea. So it goes back to that core
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question again of how can we be complying with or using the
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act? That's civil
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rights intent. Right. Based out of the momentum from Brown vs Board
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of Education. All these good intentions in policy and practice, how can we
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comply with that? Yet we can have these metrics and these disparities that persist
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over time. And so I think that this is really where the monitoring
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system has to be examined for its equity impacts
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at a much, you know, not just within one
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state, not one district, but really across the entire United States
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because something isn't working. But I've never worked
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with practitioners that say we don't want to be monitored. It's just saying the way
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that the monitoring system is set up now could use some tinkering and some changes.
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And I think one other thing I just want to add on there is,
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there has been tinkering and changes over the years. As I mentioned, we moved
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from compliance to accountability. But what's happened is there's been this layering
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of different regulations over time or different little pieces that
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make the SPP APR and significant disproportionality
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monitoring very cumbersome for practitioners. It is very
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hard to understand because there are so many different
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pieces from mathematical calculations of that acceptable or unacceptable
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inequity and then along with the translation of that then to districts and
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then making sure that they are, you know, complying with idea and creating monitoring
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plans. And there's, there's a lot to contend with that
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can be, can be tricky, tricky to navigate,
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Leave it at that. So how the
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states have been addressing the issue, I mean you're telling a little bit about
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issues about reporting, but what do we know about what states do when
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they found disproportionality? Again, so this
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is where I think the project that I'm currently working on with a team of
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folks that I've known since graduate school, we've all been asking questions
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around disproportionality in different ways. We've come together to build
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this really large scale multi state study where that's
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exactly what we're trying to understand because there is very,
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very little empirical evidence that is informing
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this theory of change around monitoring
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and addressing disproportionality. And how are states doing it? You know,
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some of the preliminary findings that we're coming together
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with is, you know, with the discretion that states have,
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as I just mentioned, and has been documented for decades, is the
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problem's not being solved. People understand, and states
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understand the importance of monitoring. But depending on how much infrastructure
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bureaucratic layers that they have to address disproportionality,
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it can become something that is a multi stepped improvement
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process. Or it could be something where you have two individuals that are tasked to
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do this across an entire state and they're trying to figure out what to do.
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And so the variation really has a lot of impact on,
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you know, how things are addressed. And I've seen in states where there's
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been infrastructure built over a decade plus that there's really clear ways
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to begin to address this. Looking for root causes, contributing factors, making sure you're
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tying interventions to what we know about disproportionality,
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make change. And then in other contexts you can see
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people working to just try to understand that regulatory framework.
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And I have a lot of interviews with state level personnel
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who kind of articulate this kind of,
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you know, this. The complex space where they have to
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move federal policy from the state level to the district level
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can be one that feels very,
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very difficult because they're translating something that people are
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not always proud of, the fact that there are racial and disability inequities.
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And then they're tasked with saying this is how you have to fix it.
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When again, there's not a lot of empirical evidence that
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says these are best practices at a large scale of how to address
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this problem. And this is where we, you know, our study
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right now is really trying to lean in and think about what is it that
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we could find that are impactful levers for change at scale.
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Where do I see convergence and divergence between federal mandates,
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state actions and local interpretation of idea?
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And then how do we feed that back into potentially improving the
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monitoring system? Well, I imagine that's,
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that's kind of very difficult right now because
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I know authors, you know, there's been like we have the last episode
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of Diving with Gwen Tavlin talking about most People has been
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95 has been fired and these are the people that supposed to follow up with
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states, is that right? That's correct. And I think, you know, this is where
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I can kind of pull out of just disproportionality in general and Just,
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you know, there are very,
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there's many levers for improvement in schools.
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The regulatory levers that have typically been used
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for change are going to come from parents and advocacy. So that's the ground up.
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And then you're going to have this kind of systems level state
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performance plan, annual performance report levers. So you have this kind of individualized
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advocacy and you have this system level, top down approach.
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I would argue what I've seen in my work over time is those two do
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not meet in a way that can really shift systems in
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a unified way. And so one of the things that I think
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I've grappled with through my work and what we see in this large scale project
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we have now is knowing the imperfections of the system that
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is, and again, state personnel, people in districts,
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nobody says we should get rid of the monitoring system, but there's
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spaces where we could improve it. And so I think that there's a
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lot of opportunity to rethink the
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way that we are asking districts to monitor outcomes for students with
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disability, whether it's with disproportionality or graduation outcomes, whatever it
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may be. But we do need the infrastructure to do this. And if we
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don't do that, then the only kind of change mechanisms again
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that research has shown and time has shown is gonna be putting it on the
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individual level when we do have the systemic function. And there
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is entire kind of ecosystem that I've seen layered
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from the federal to the state to the district level that works on
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a yearly basis that churns out these reports that are going
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to at least tell us at minimum that there is a racial and disability
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inequity. And one thing I want to add to is like again, in states where
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they have not necessarily built the infrastructure to do this work
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around disproportionality, the fact that there is a federal directive
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to look at racial and disability inequities is a powerful tool.
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When you walk into districts and you're saying that there's
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a numerical inequity, this isn't the state saying you have to do this. This is
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coming from the federal level. So we need to monitor this and address it.
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And then there's a whole host of other issues that come with monitoring where states
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and districts have multiple plans that aren't always coordinated or aren't
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always working in a cohesive manner. There's lots of room for improvement there.
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But monitoring is really an important function that has
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again, room for improvement, but one that we need
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in order to understand at the aggregate what is going on
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in relationship to special education outcomes for students
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with disabilities. And there was a point, I remember
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it was last year, a couple of years ago, there were discussions about stopping,
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requiring states to report this proportionality.
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Did that happen? The conversation is still going on,
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yeah. It's tricky because there's
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so much built into the statute, into idea, and as
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I mentioned, there's been these layers and pieces of changes. So you have the 2016
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equity and idea regulation, which really asked practitioners
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to go a little bit further and in addressing significant disproportionality
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and think about what are the contributing factors which would lead to
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a root cause analysis? Or districts, you know, thinking like, what is it that's
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actually happening that's contributing to this inequity? And in the work that we've done,
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especially for this large scale project is, you know,
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the qualitative work in particular,
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very basic questions about the monitoring system with people at the
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state and the local level, and what has come out across
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every level of the educational ecosystem that we've engaged with thus
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far is that the language around contributing factors
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is one of the places where people feel some power or agency
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as a practitioner engaging with policy, because it gives a chance
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to ask a little bit further, how do we do this work instead of just
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saying comply with IDEA and reduce this. So that's
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been an important thing and that's kind of where the room
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for improvement and really thinking about the levers of change that work or
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don't work are going to be incredibly important moving forward as
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we think about the infrastructure that's there or not for monitoring. And then what
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could we do to improve what already exists?
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So a little bit, you got your feet wet. A little bit about your
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project. Can you tell us a little bit? Just describe it briefly about what it's
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about, what's the scope of it and what was kind of your main findings?
24:43
Absolutely. So I think our big goal is really,
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again with my team and I, it's a continuation and an expansion of work we've
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been orbiting around for over a decade. And it's
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a study of monitoring as a mechanism for systemic change.
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And it's really a systems focused project and it's tying together
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empirical longitudinal data across four states with the lived experiences
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of people working within the system and experience in it. So from
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the federal to the local level, you know, we have state leaders,
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district leaders, building leaders, teachers, caregivers and
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students. We're all, we're asking them all the similar questions of what
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does it feel like to engage with idea in particular
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in relation to this, this monitoring framework. And then we're,
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we're coupling that with the states that we're working with, provided us with over
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12 years of longitudinal data which we have linked to the
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SPP APRs and where we can really think about what are those contextual
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factors over time that contribute to disproportionality?
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Because we find that districts are cited,
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they surpass that state threshold over time in and
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out. And city districts are always perpetually what we found
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in our research. They're perpetually under some kind of monitoring for disproportionality.
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Suburban and rural districts actually have a really high preponderance
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of citations for racial disproportionality. And we're going into districts
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around these different locales to really understand again, why, and then pairing
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that with thinking about, okay, so how are district leaders, how are building
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leaders? How are teachers, caregivers, and students all experiencing
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this? So then, you know, the big goal of the project is to provide
26:30
empirically informed data around the regulatory and monitoring
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landscape to improve it, because we know that it layers onto a
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complex system of education in the US we know it layers onto
26:44
complex districts and contexts. But what can we do to shift
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it or find those levers, again, with empirical data to improve what
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has been documented now for a long time to
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allow inequities to persist with evidence of
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adherence to ida? Yeah, that seems like a
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very large project and very overwhelming.
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I just, just hearing you, I was like, I'm stressing it out, just managing all
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those different layers of data sources, of working with
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practitioners, policymakers, you know,
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administrators, more at the federal level with policy.
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That seems very impressive. I imagine you have a large team and funding
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from somewhere. You know, the team
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is one that, like I've said before, we've been thinking
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about this from graduate school onward, about disproportionality
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in many different ways. And so as you come together as a team, as a
27:45
collaborative effort, there's ways to ask questions and engage with the
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complexity of this project. And one of the first things that we had
27:53
to do was really think about, and, you know, when I think of advice for
27:57
researchers and stuff like that is we really had to start with a very strong
28:00
theoretical and conceptual framing for the work, because getting
28:05
information from so many different sources and trying
28:09
to understand how a system works or doesn't work and how it benefits
28:13
some over others requires a pretty tight container
28:16
to empirically investigate such a complex issue.
28:20
And so, you know, I think that there's something about having
28:24
the time and Space and funding to do so. And then also really not
28:29
losing sight of the fact that this is systems level inquiry. Because my
28:32
work in the past has been much more focused on like district level. And so
28:37
how do we expand outward to think of from the macro, from the
28:41
federal down to the micro and the micro back up to the, to the macro
28:44
to make sense again of what works and what doesn't work. And you
28:48
know, we've got four years where we are going to,
28:52
you know, continue to do this work and, and really try to share as many
28:56
emerging findings as we can. Yeah, so. And you're funding,
29:01
you know, hasn't been cut. You know, there's been a lot of cut to DI
29:04
kind of funding. This seems like has a DI flavor.
29:07
You know, you're looking at racial disproportionality, but so far you've been on
29:11
safe grounds. So our study is really focused on the monitoring and
29:15
the regulatory framework with disproportionality indicators as the,
29:19
the mechanisms to really understand what works and
29:23
what doesn't. And so we've had, you know,
29:27
one of the things that we are really doing with our work is placing
29:31
it within again, the context, the broader context of what.
29:35
How can we better improve the monitoring structure that
29:39
currently is, you know, put on all 50
29:44
states in the territories in the United States to, to improve. So I
29:49
think that having a systems level lens that is focused
29:53
on ida, which is really aligned with the type of funding that is,
29:58
you know, the type of funding that does the work to evaluate
30:02
the effectiveness of IDEA and to evaluate the impact of IDEA and
30:06
special education outcomes, we. Our work is really situated in that space.
30:11
Well, and tell us what you have found so far. I mean, the exciting
30:16
part. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're, we're in the beginning stages of the project
30:20
and so the, everything is kind of emerging and coming
30:24
out. But one of the things that I've kind of talked about through just
30:28
setting and laying out the land of this work is that that
30:32
interplay between federal authority and state autonomy is, you know,
30:36
is a very important factor on how this issue is addressed or
30:40
not. There's really tight coupling in the policy landscape between what the federal
30:44
level says and the state says. But then it really unravels at the district
30:47
level and the nuances of policy start to lose
30:52
meaning from the technicalities of it. And that's where you see a
30:55
lot of that kind of moral and ethical engagement with idea become a
30:59
little bit, there's more space within there. The other
31:04
thing that we've really found is that there's, there's obviously
31:08
room for improvement. And the regulatory landscape is really needlessly
31:12
complex in a way where practitioners are again, really trying
31:16
to think about how do we do this work without spinning
31:20
wheels that have already been spun? How can we learn from others? And so one
31:24
of the things that has really started to pop out is the need for technical
31:28
assistance work. And the fact that technical assistance work from the
31:31
federal and at the state level is one way, kind of a bridge that
31:35
helps make sure that a policy that's layered across
31:40
multiple systems is enacted with fidelity and also can push
31:44
towards the outcomes that we are hoping to see.
31:48
And then, you know, one of the last things is that because we're
31:51
combining, you know, quantitative, qualitative data and thinking about these different pieces
31:56
is that the technical salience of IDA and the monitoring structure is very strong.
32:00
But there is this, this need to humanize policy enactments
32:04
in ways that, you know, are understood at every level
32:09
of the system. So, for example, one of the participants that I interviewed kind
32:13
of likened how this determination of a threshold for
32:17
disproportionality at the state level is kind
32:21
of like, they likened it to something
32:25
like cancer. And they're saying, if you knew you were living in a state,
32:28
a district or a space or a regional space where there
32:32
was three times more likely to have cancer or a certain kind of outcome,
32:35
we should be doing something different about that than just tracking that and
32:39
saying it. And I think that it's that human, the humanizing
32:44
of policy that becomes really important because there's a lot of time and
32:48
attention put on statistics, the methodology around understanding
32:52
disproportionality, but the actual impact on students.
32:56
And I have another state level person that I interviewed
33:00
who really talked about how that methodology doesn't always
33:04
capture, because you have to have a minimum cell size and, you know, there's all
33:08
these pieces to. It doesn't actually capture the impact,
33:11
sufficient impact on students. And one of the quotes that they,
33:15
you know, and I'm summarizing this is saying, you can't.
33:18
They were saying, you can't tell me that the 1, 2, 3 or 4 students
33:21
in that district that are experiencing disproportionality that it doesn't matter
33:25
just because the ratio or the methodology didn't capture
33:30
it. So it's really, again, thinking about how do we understand
33:34
the layers of how the policy trickles down and then how do we make sure
33:38
that its intent is actually doing what it needs to do to
33:42
assure that students and caregivers and Teachers and
33:46
everybody feels sense of agency and can address
33:49
inequities that are persistent.
33:53
What, what of the. All these findings that struck you the most?
33:56
What. What surprised you the most of all? This? This is like, huh, I didn't
34:00
think that's going to happen. I'll tell you the thing that struck me the most
34:04
was the. The recognition of the limitations from
34:09
the top down of this current structure, but the fact
34:12
that we are all operating within this monitoring structure because it's what we
34:16
have. And so there's always a delicate balance
34:20
of we need something to
34:24
help us understand a problem, disability and racial inequities.
34:27
We need a policy there. But the life that
34:32
it's taken on its own as a monitoring system and the
34:37
detachment from its actual intent and impact,
34:41
even though so much time and energy is put into this every year across
34:45
the system, I think that that's been very stark. And what's
34:48
very important to me and to our team in doing this work is again,
34:53
really highlighting where the lived experiences
34:57
are going to layer onto what we can see quantitatively over time
35:01
in relation to the regulatory environment and
35:05
make sure that those who are most impacted in the system,
35:08
really Students. Right, Students and their caregivers
35:12
and the families, that they are not symbolically placed
35:16
within policy of like parent voice matters or perspectives or
35:20
community perspectives, but that their experiences, their lived realities,
35:24
their engagement with idea at the local level
35:28
is actually brought then into the current policy and monitoring
35:33
framework. Because we can talk about students,
35:37
we can create methodologies to capture districts that are,
35:41
you know, meeting a threshold or not. But behind all of those numbers
35:45
is that experience is the lived experience in districts. And so I
35:50
think like, the most important focus is to continue
35:53
to do the work so that we can assure that we are getting
35:58
every layer of the policy ecosystem represented in our
36:02
data to again provide those recommendations based on
36:06
empirical findings. To improve what a system that is necessary but can
36:10
has room for improvement. Well, that takes us
36:14
to the next question. What's your advice for states and districts to address disproportionality?
36:19
So I appreciate that question because one of the core things that we also do
36:23
with our project is really think about engaging with
36:28
the states and districts we're working with and sharing findings all the time,
36:31
like as much as we. That's emerging because the problem is acute
36:36
and it's necessary to be addressed now. So how do we bring this systems lens
36:39
to make an actionable, you know, help with actionable
36:43
plans? Like we've worked where we've brought emerging findings
36:47
and layered it onto district root cause reports and said, hey, like, how do we
36:51
make sense of what we see empirically and what you wrote in a root cause
36:54
report to address disproportionality and make change? So I think
36:58
that one recommendation that is very tightly coupled
37:01
with the project I'm talking about is to make sure that, you know, there's a
37:05
critical bridge between research and practice and relationships
37:09
to share research with practice. And again, that highlights the importance
37:13
of technical assistance, because technical assistance allows for
37:17
the translation of research to practice,
37:20
oftentimes with policy in a systems lens. And I think
37:24
that it's also really important right now for states to continue to
37:28
enhance and support their state longitudinal data
37:32
systems because, you know, if monitoring is shifting at the
37:36
federal level, states have the capacity to monitor outcomes at the local
37:41
level. So if they can build out and continue to use state longitudinal data
37:45
systems to analyze outcomes, and then I think one of
37:49
the most important things
37:53
in this work that comes out of the data, comes out of years of experience
37:56
working here, is that you can't address disproportionality just within special education.
38:00
It cannot rest a citation.
38:03
A recognition of disproportionality through idea cannot just go
38:07
to a special ed director. It has to be something that's embedded throughout the
38:11
entire system. And you know, oftentimes because this
38:15
monitoring mechanism is situated within ida, it remains
38:20
a special education issue when it should any kind of improvement
38:24
plan around it. And what I've seen in the data come out very loudly is
38:27
that when shifts do occur, it's because the entire district,
38:32
the entire team is engaged in the work. But it
38:36
just happens to be that idea asks for the capturing of racial
38:40
and disability inequities at the same time. So that's so interesting.
38:44
Let me highlight some, some stuff that you say because I thought it was very
38:47
important, the idea of sharing findings with stakeholders.
38:52
I think that's fantastic. I think we don't probably in research, we don't do it
38:55
enough and really do a loop feedback of what we're finding on a timely
38:59
basis. No, wait like three, four years for the project to end, and then
39:03
maybe the findings are more for researchers
39:08
than for policymaker. Right. The second thing that you say that really grabbed
39:12
my attention is the issue of technical assistance centers because they play a pivotal role
39:16
on addressing disproportionality or many other equity issues in the
39:20
nation. They translate, they create resources, they provide supports, even like
39:25
almost at consulting basis to address that. But we also know
39:29
this year most of the technical assistance centers have been
39:32
cut off their Family. Right. Most of them had been closed.
39:36
I know there's a lawsuit going on. So that's something that's
39:40
been to consider because people doesn't know we're at technical assistance centers. I encourage
39:44
our audience to listen. Our episode specifically
39:48
about technical assistance centers we had a few months ago. But they're
39:52
a key actor in this ecosystem, as you call it.
39:55
And the last thing is like that.
39:59
This always comes to my mind in my conversations. People think this proportionality
40:03
is a special ed issue when it's really not. Or maybe
40:07
special ed is part of the problem, but it's not a solely special ed
40:11
issue. Right. Students are not in special ed when
40:15
they're being identified. They're student gen ed and they're their trajectory and histories
40:19
and experiences are in the general education classroom as well.
40:22
And if I'm correct, Katherine. Correct.
40:26
If not, the states are allowed to use 15% of the IDEA funds
40:31
to address disproportionality and use it for interventions within
40:35
the general education. Correct. So it gets a little complex in there
40:40
because there's different for if it's special education or not. But generally,
40:45
yes, states and districts are allowed to use
40:49
comprehensive CCES funds in
40:53
order to address those contributing factors that lead to disproportionality.
40:58
And as I mentioned before, what I see in the data is
41:03
that is a point where policy feels something that can
41:06
be acted upon in a way that builds agency for practitioners
41:11
and is an important mechanism. And, you know, technical assistance
41:15
comes in there. And I think the other thing that is interesting around technical assistance
41:19
is again, there's this tight coupling between what the federal and the states understand
41:23
around policy. When you come into districts and we
41:27
think of rural districts versus urban versus suburban across different kinds of
41:31
states, you know, the work and policy becomes diffuse
41:36
and professional development then comes in. And professional development
41:39
can be a response to an acute need in a district,
41:43
or it could be loosely tied to a contributing factor,
41:46
disproportionality, something like that. But the power of technical
41:50
assistance is really keeping this kind of, especially in relationship
41:54
to the work that we're doing is really keeping this focus on what is
41:58
the policy saying is a problem. How do we then put resources
42:02
toward that and then how do we maintain that systems lens that again,
42:06
won't just have us siphon all of our resources to addressing something
42:10
within special education, but across an entire educational ecosystem
42:15
at the district level or state level. And that's a really important point that continuously
42:20
comes out in the data. And I imagine as we move along,
42:23
we'll become Even louder because it's not
42:27
a surprising finding per se, but it's very prevalent.
42:30
Wow. We talked a little bit about advice
42:34
for state and districts or disproportionality. What advice do
42:38
you have actually for researchers who wants to study this? Yeah, no, there's so,
42:42
I mean, there's a lot of research on disproportionality. There is a
42:46
lot of heated debates around the issue. Now it's a controversial
42:50
issue. You get in this dinner table with
42:54
people that are doing this work and it can be pretty heated.
42:57
So what you've done, advice do you have for people in
43:01
studies? Yeah. And so I'm going to just speak from the policy and the systems
43:06
level lens because I think again, what brought us to
43:10
this project we're at is pulling pieces together and saying,
43:13
what do we know and what don't we know? And then how can we improve
43:17
the policy and the regulatory environment? So I think researchers need to
43:20
embrace complexity because disproportionality is complex. It doesn't exist
43:25
within one system. I think there's a need to resist singular narratives
43:29
of why it does or does not exist. Because, you know, there is
43:34
a long line of research that makes very clear the
43:38
historical, legal, institutional context that have
43:42
led to where we are today. It doesn't just pop up, you know, because there's
43:47
a certain group of students that aren't, you know, meeting a certain metric. It's something
43:50
that has built up over time. I think again, and I mentioned
43:54
it earlier, talking about the study is you have to make theory explicit in
43:59
your work because there's an underlying understanding of
44:03
disproportionality where a singular intervention cannot address a systemic
44:07
issue. And I see that repeatedly in the work where the,
44:12
again, where people feel agency engaging with policy to
44:16
address disproportionality. It is when you have all the pieces moving together.
44:20
There is not one single part of empty, multi tiered systems
44:24
of support or mtss. There's not one single reading program that cannot address a
44:28
systemic issue. And so again, I think that really highlights how
44:32
policy is both an object to study and it's a tool to change
44:35
things. So I think there's something around that dual
44:41
role policy. And then two other things I just really want to add is I
44:45
would really encourage people to be creative and methodologically inventive around this
44:49
issue because again, it is historically situated,
44:52
it is complex. There is no single solution.
44:56
Research continuously shows there is no single solution to addressing this
44:59
problem. If there is one, I would like to know, but I've Never seen it
45:03
in the work I've done or the work I've read. And I think part of
45:06
being inventive goes back to those research to practice partnerships where when
45:11
you're engaging with practitioners, they have a whole wealth of knowledge that I'll never have
45:14
as a researcher. But I know when we come together we can build conversation.
45:18
And so having humility and purpose in collaboration can
45:22
also surface questions and potential answers of how to address
45:26
the issue that's rooted in practice and the people actually doing the work trying
45:31
to address this problem. So it's not admiring the problem from 30,000ft
45:36
above, but it's really about engaging and truly
45:40
embracing the complexity and the. There's a
45:44
creative nature that I think is necessary to do this work so that we
45:48
don't just keep repeating. Like I said before, we've known for decades,
45:51
Lloyd Dunn we've known this problem exists.
45:55
So what can we do that's different or try to do that's
46:00
different to address it? And where I sit now and for my work,
46:03
it's a systems level perspective to try to tie all
46:07
the pieces together because to me that is a way to respond
46:11
to some of the complexity behind the issue. Thank you so much for that response.
46:15
You know, I'm going to finish with a question I do to all my interviewees,
46:19
which is a hopeful question. It's a question that I ask you about dreaming.
46:23
What would you like to see in a special education in the next five years?
46:28
You know, this question I think is a tough one to answer in some
46:33
ways and then a very easy one in others. So I will kind of stay
46:37
within the lane that I've been talking about in this conversation is one there
46:42
absolutely needs to be a reauthorization of idea that's empirically
46:46
informed and responsive to what we've learned since 2004.
46:51
That really is thinking about like, how can we improve the
46:55
systems that we have and knowing what we know of what works
46:59
for whom and where. I think that there needs again be a really a
47:03
much stronger relationship between research and policy, but systems
47:06
level policy for reauthorization of ida. And then I
47:10
think that one thing that it kind of aligns with the technical
47:14
assistance comment and then also with what we see in our data is to see
47:19
a lot. I know that there's infrastructure already across the country, but to continue
47:23
to really push for collaboration
47:27
and mutual learning across states and with each other and with practitioners
47:32
and expand partnerships because there's so much
47:36
knowledge on the ground that can be used to improve what
47:40
currently exists. And so I'd love to see that become louder and part of
47:44
a conversation of ida. And then again, just reiterating the same point is,
47:48
you know, focus on systems level learning. Like, what can we, how can we better
47:52
think about early intervention or these, you know, things like MTSs, like,
47:56
how could we understand that in a way that could better inform
48:01
and actually shift the outcomes that we hope to see, which is more
48:05
equitable outcomes and streaming policy processes? But I
48:10
think for me, it's really about empirically informed
48:13
IDA reauthorization that is responsive to lived experiences
48:18
and longitudinal understanding of what has worked and
48:22
hasn't worked over time. Thank you, Katherine. You know, I must say, I don't know,
48:26
I'm a little afraid and skeptical about having a reauthorization in the current political context.
48:30
And you don't have to say anything about that. I'm saying it. But that gives
48:34
goosebumps. If Congress and Senate right now text, IODA wants to
48:38
reauthorize it. I will be a little scared, but we'll leave it there.
48:41
Thank you, Katherine, so much for being with us. And yeah,
48:45
good luck with your project. Thank you. I appreciate it.
48:51
Thank you for listening to Thai Fair. I hope you learned
48:55
from, from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to spread the
48:59
word about the show. See you next time.