Unpacking the Logic of Compliance in Special Ed
Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides’s new co-authored article titled “Unpacking the Logic of Compliance in Special Education: Contextual Influences on Discipline Racial Disparities in Suburban Schools” investigates how disability policy is a reproductive social force that sustains, rather than disrupts, racial discipline disparities. According to Volgarides the article shows “how contextual influences relate to discipline racial disparities and how race and racialization processes were erased through acts of policy compliance. Due to this, educators did not disrupt locally occurring racialized inequities. Policy compliance provided a cover for discriminatory practices. The study provides a novel sociological and organizational lens for understanding a long-standing and complex problem in special education, that of racial discipline disproportionality.”
Voulgarides is an Assistant Professor in Special Education at the School of Education.
The article is available through the journal Sociology in Education.