The song remains the same: transposition and the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education

Abstract

The disproportionate representation of minority students in special education has long been recognised as a problem in the United States. It is, however, only with the 2004 authorisation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) that Congress has tried to prescribe a remedy for this. Beginning with a deconstruction of the case law, public law and policy interpretations built around IDEA, this paper will first use an understanding of the concept of ‘institutional ablism’ as it has been developed within disability studies, to challenge the widely accepted view of IDEA as civil rights legislation. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the article will then offer a further deconstruction of IDEA focusing on the IDEA’s attempt to address the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education. The analysis of the law illustrates the use of a mechanism that I will call transposition: the use of the legally accepted segregation of special education to maintain the effects of the unacceptable and illegal segregation by race. The analysis will make the case that the development of special education in the United States offers yet another example of interest convergence, specifically that of the marginal disability rights gained with the creation of special education converging with the white interest of recouping the losses of the US Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision.