Leading for Equity and Inclusion at the Intersections of Disability and Race: A Call to Action Through Interdisciplinary Engagement

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) guarantees the right to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment for every eligible student with a disability. While millions of children have benefited from the enactment of IDEA (Office of Special Education Programs, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, U.S. Department of Education [U.S. DoE], 2022), serious and long-standing implementation problems have plagued special education, including ever-present racialized inequities (Ahram et al., 2021). These inequities include the inappropriate identification and placement of students with disabilities in special education and segregated settings and the overuse of punitive disciplinary measures often referred to as racial disproportionality. Further complicating equitable implementation of IDEA is the lack of adequate training for school leaders and general and special education teachers (e.g., DeMatthews et al., 2020). The lack of training is especially consequential for Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color (BIYOC) given the complex educational opportunity gaps and educational debts that shape both general and special education spaces (Boykin & Noguera, 2011; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Noguera & Syeed, 2020; Thorius & Tan, 2015; Voulgarides, 2023).

School leadership is interdisciplinary and should be contextually and culturally responsive (e.g., DeMatthews, 2020). Principals require a broad range of skills to foster an inclusive school vision, build effective teams and teacher capacity to meet the diverse needs of all students, reorganize their schools to equitably distribute resources and opportunities, and meaningfully and authentically engage with families, businesses, and communities (DeMatthews et al., 2023). However, researchers have consistently found that principals lack adequate training to examine issues of race and racism (e.g., Irby et al., 2019; Welton & Diem, 2021) as well as legal and instructional areas in special education (e.g., National Association of Secondary School Principals [NASSP], 2021; Pazey & Cole, 2013; Schaaf et al., 2015; Sun & Xin, 2019; Voulgarides et al., 2022). Research focused on school leadership too often fails to examine the interdisciplinary nature of school leadership. For example, while a growing body of evidence provides insight into how principals lead to address issues of race and racism (e.g., Gooden et al., 2018), few studies consider how principals lead in ways that address racism, ableism, and other forms of marginalization within their daily work. Thus, the field of educational leadership has limited understandings and insights into preparing leaders to meet the diverse needs of students with disabilities.

As a result, and often to the detriment of historically marginalized and racialized students, principals often learn on the job how to best support the unique needs of students with disabilities and their families. On the job learning can lead to principals unknowingly making serious mistakes, delegating job duties related to special education away to subordinates who also lack preparation and insights, or simply maintaining status quo (Frick et al., 2013; O’Laughlin & Lindle, 2015). Predictably, novice principals mentored and socialized by the prior generation of underprepared principals will likely do very little to disrupt long-standing inequities. The lack of preparation coupled with the complexity of school leadership places principals in positions of difficulty as they seek to create inclusive and equitable schools that advance student achievement and other important educational experiences and outcomes. Yet, principals are also in a pivotal position to create and sustain inclusive and equitable schools that meet the diverse needs of all students. This edited volume aims to address some of these concerns.

The idea for the special issue originated from a Spencer Foundation funded conference grant that was held in December 2022 in New York City, of which Dr Catherine Voulgarides was PI, along with Co-PIs Drs Maria Cioe Pena and Rachel Fish. Dr David DeMatthews was invited to participate as a mentor. The conference was designed to build an interdisciplinary, intersectional, and diverse dialogue about pressing equity concerns in special education. The network of scholars in attendance were tasked to expand understandings of intersectional equity issues in special education and to influence policy and practice at multiple levels. One key takeaway from the dialogue was the need for special education researchers and scholars to engage in the field of educational leadership. This is especially true given how important principals are to creating inclusive and equitable schools that meet the diverse needs of students with disabilities.

In this special issue, we asked contributing authors (many of whom were conference attendees) to identify complex and intersectional equity concerns in special education and to tie those concerns to leadership and to IDEA. Our goal was to create teaching cases that could empower aspiring and current leaders with the knowledge and skills necessary to support and promote social change and justice for students with disabilities at their intersections. The contributors’ interdisciplinary, intersectional, and diverse expertise is evident throughout the special issue.

Each case situates the enactment of the IDEA within a local context. This allows readers to critically understand how the interaction between leadership, IDEA, and intersectional equity concerns relate. The cases also illustrate that there is rarely a singular solution or intervention that can address the issues presented in the cases in this special issue. By focusing on intersectional equity issues in special education and policy enactment, we encourage readers to move beyond compliance with IDEA to move toward equity, to engage with intersectional and expansive equity approaches, and to address both ableism and racism in educational practice (Annamma et al., 2023; DeMatthews, 2020; Voulgarides, 2018). Moreover, the cases illustrate that equity work is never finished. Equity work requires creative solutions to complex problems.

Four key themes emerge from the cases included in this special issue. First, critical, intersectional, and historically and contextually situated approaches are necessary for advancing equity at the intersection of special education, leadership, and IDEA. Second, leaders and educators have a considerable amount of latitude to shape academic, social, and emotional opportunities for students via IDEA. This latitude can be used to hinder or promote more equitable outcomes, or ignore equity concerns altogether. Third, legal literacy is important as principals have an ethical responsibility to adhere to the law, but legal knowledge is not enough to move systems toward equity. Knowledge of the legislation is necessary to secure educational opportunities and supports for students with disabilities, but how IDEA is used in practice and for whom it is leveraged has equity implications. Finally, leaders must be democratic and inclusive. School leaders cannot claim to be inclusive for students with disabilities, while excluding parents, failing to acknowledge the cultural assets of their students, or disempowering students and educators when they try to share their ideas, experiences, and recommendations.

In summary, the purpose of this special issue is to provide principal preparation programs and in-service professional development experts with a set of teaching cases tied to issues of equity in special education and to IDEA. The cases enable instructors and aspiring leaders to wrestle with the intricacies of deeply complex equity issues, special education service delivery and supports, and leadership strategies. Collectively, the cases provide concrete strategies and approaches for shifting how we conceptualize the purpose and function of special education in pursuit of educational equity. The cases also provide leaders with the legal literacy, critical skills, knowledge, and dispositions needed to equitably lead in special education. We are confident that the topics raised in this special issue will be of interest to a wide array of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Moreover, IDEA is long overdue for reauthorization, and racial and intersectional equity issues must be central to reauthorization.

In closing, we provide our own teaching notes to this special issue to encourage researchers and leaders to continue to grapple with the equity concerns that arise at the intersection of special education service delivery, leadership, and IDEA. Below, we identify a set of practices that are critical to leading for equity and inclusion at the intersections of disability and race and reference the scholarship of the contributors to this special issue, where possible, in an effort to emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to improving schools for all students.

Leading for equity and inclusion at the intersections of disability and race includes efforts to:

Unpack how racism and ableism affect special education identification, service delivery, IDEA compliance, and leadership development.

Voulgarides, C. K., Jacobs, J., Lopez, D., & Barrio, B. L. (2024). Moving beyond compliance and toward equity to address racial disproportionality. Intervention in School and Clinic, 10534512241258721.

Sullivan, A., & Proctor, S. (2016). The shield or the sword? Revising the debate on racial disproportionality in special education and implications for school psychologists. School Psychology Forum: Research in Practice, 10(3), 278–288.

Engage with IDEA in ways that assure all students are equitably served, rather than a select few.

Annamma, S., & Morrison, D. (2018). DisCrit classroom ecology: Using praxis to dismantle dysfunctional education ecologies. Teaching and Teacher Education, 73, 70–80.

Taylor, J., & Sailor, W. (2024). A case for systems change in special education. Remedial and Special Education, 45(2), 125–135.

Embrace the complexity of equity work to promote systems level change.

DeMatthews, D. (2021). Undoing systems of exclusion: Exploring inclusive leadership and systems thinking in two inclusive elementary schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 59(1), 5–21.

Safir, S., & Dugan, J. (2021). Street data: A next-generation model for equity, pedagogy, and school transformation. Corwin.

Build communities of practice that substantively engage with participant’s diverse positionalities and allow for honest discussions about intersectional equity issues.

Thorius, K. A. K. (2023). Equity expansive technical assistance for schools: Education partnerships to reverse racial disproportionality. Teachers College Press.

Boveda, M., & Weinberg, A. E. (2022). Centering racialized educators in collaborative teacher education: The development of the intersectionally conscious collaboration protocol. Teacher Education and Special Education, 45(1), 8–26.

Leverage culturally rich and sustaining practices that empower and center historically marginalized voices.

Harry, B., & Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L. (2020). Meeting families where they are: Building equity through advocacy with diverse schools and communities. Teachers College Press.

Barrio, B. L. (2022). Culturally responsive individualized education programs: Building transition bridges between families and schools. Intervention in School and Clinic, 58(2), 92–99.

McCray, E. D., & Waitoller, F. R. (2023). Examining who special educators are prepared to teach: Addressing intersecting identities. In E. D. McCray, E. Bettini, M. T. Brownell, J. McLeskey & P. T. Sindelar (Eds.), Handbook of research on special education teacher preparation (pp. 3–19). Routledge.

Operate with and develop an intersectional lens—in both professional and personal spaces—to advance educational equity.

Cannon, M. A., & Hernández-Saca, D. I. (2021). The gift of disruption: Feeling and communicating subverted truths at the intersection of racist and ableist practices. In Mullen, C. (Ed.). Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education Springer International Handbooks of Education (pp. 1-24). Springer Publisher

Fergus, E. (2024). Desegregating ourselves: Challenging the biases that perpetuate inequities in our schools. Corwin Press.

Kozleski, E. B., Stepaniuk, I., & Proffitt, W. (2020). Leading through a critical lens: The application of DisCrit in framing, implementing and improving equity driven, educational systems for all students. Journal of Educational Administration, 58(5), 489–505.