Does Compliance Matter in Special Education?: IDEA and the Hidden Inequities of Practice (Disability, Culture, and Equity Series)

Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at City University of New York (CUNY)--Hunter College

This book asks a question that many educators may think, but won’t say out loud: Does compliance with IDEA legislation matter? The author acknowledges that, while compliance with IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) is important, it can also be an administrative burden that detracts from practitioners’ capacity to adequately serve students with disabilities.

Using data collected from three suburban school districts, Voulgarides helps us to understand how compliance with IDEA intersects with decades of evidence of racial inequities in student outcomes. This timely and thought-provoking book unpacks the civil rights history of IDEA, examines the impact of its procedural focus on educational practice, and questions why racial inequities in special education persist despite good intentions by policymakers, educators, and school personnel.

Book Features:

• Uses empirical evidence to examine the common assumption that compliance with IDEA leads to educational equity.
• Focuses on the different dimensions of the equity concern that lie at the intersection between race, disability, and educational policy.
• Challenges practitioners to think about the roles they play in both the production and the disruption of educational inequities.

Recipient of the Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award 2020 from the American Sociological Association (ASA).

“This book provides a necessary discussion of racial/ethnic disproportionality and its intersection with special education policy, particularly forcing us to consider a critical question of IDEA: is it enough? Voulgarides shares an amazing description of how policy, individual actors, political forces, and racial/ethnic dynamics operate within a school district and unintentionally result in racial disparities. This is a necessary read for special education policy champions.”
―Edward Fergus, Temple University

This is a book about racial disproportionality in special education and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the single most influential piece of legislation affecting students with disabilities in schools. It is also about the paradox that exists between the persistence of racial disparities in special education and an extensive legal framework aimed at ensuring equal opportunity and access to high-quality educational services for all students. In this book, I engage with the paradox and theoretically and empirically question how individual rights, protections, and monitoring of special education outcomes can coexist with persistent racial disparities. I also show how compliance with IDEA may not be enough to ensure that educational equity is achieved in practice. 

Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides is an Assistant Professor of Special Education at City University of New York (CUNY)--Hunter College