Perspectives on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education: A Four-Part Series Wednesday, January 27, 2021 | 3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Register for Zoom link

What is Required to Achieve Equity in Special Education?

Examining the Potentials and Pitfalls of Legally Mandated Equity at the Intersection of Race and Disability

Dr. Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides

Assistant Professor of special education

City University of New York—Hunter College

Join the special education program for the first in a series of talks on Perspectives on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education.

Wednesday, January 27

Schedule of events (all times Central)

  • 3 to 3:45 pm: Presentation
  • 3:45 to 4 pm: Special education faculty led Q&A 4 to

In this talk, Dr. Kramarczuk Voulgarides will speak about how policy compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) relates to educator's efforts to achieve racial equity in special education outcomes. Using empirical evidence, she will discuss how policy compliance mechanisms can work to either disrupt patterns of racial inequity or serve to reinforce them. She will also discuss emerging insights from her current research that indicates there is a disjuncture between what educators see as necessary to achieve racial equity and what IDEA mandates require of them when addressing racial inequity in special education outcomes. (Resources are listed at the bottom of this page.)

The Perspectives on Racial Disproportionality in Special Education Series is hosted by the special education program in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota.

About the speaker

Dr. Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides is an assistant professor of special education at the City University of New York—Hunter College. She received her PhD from New York University in sociology of education. She examines how equity, access, and opportunity are constructed in policy and law and how the socio-cultural contexts of schools relate to equity.

Upcoming speakers in the series

  • Feb. 18, 3 to 4:30 pm, CST: Alfredo Artiles, professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education
  • March 31, 3 to 4:30 pm, CST: Aydin Bal, professor, Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  • April 16, 11 am to 12:15 pm, CST: Panel discussion: Catherine Kramarczuk Vougaides, Alfredo Artiles, Aydin Bal, and school psychology Professor Amanda Sullivan

Resources

Byron, R. A., & Roscigno, V. J. (2019). Bureaucracy, discrimination, and the racialized character of organizational life. In Race, Organizations, and the Organizing Process. Emerald Publishing Limited. Ray, V. (2019).

A theory of racialized organizations. American Sociological Review, 84(1), 26-53. Edelman, L. B. (2016).

Working law: Courts, corporations, and symbolic civil rights. University of Chicago Press. Obasogie, O. (2013).

Blinded by sight: Seeing race through the eyes of the blind. Stanford University Press. Artiles, A. J., Dorn, S., & Bal, A. (2016).

Objects of protection, enduring nodes of difference: Disability intersections with “other” differences, 1916 to 2016. Review of Research in Education, 40(1), 777-820. Artiles, A. J. (2019).

Fourteenth Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research: Reenvisioning Equity Research: Disability Identification Disparities as a Case in Point. Educational Researcher, 48(6), 325-335.