Beyond the Demographics of the Special Education Workforce: Developing Intersectional Competence to Sustain Teachers of Color

Abstract

This case demonstrates how school administrators’ development of intersectional competence can disrupt racial inequity in special education. Intersectional competence refers to educators’ preparedness to recognize how schooling is implicated in multiple, intersecting systems of oppression, collaborate with relevant stakeholders who themselves navigate multiple social marginalizations, and consider sociocultural differences while making instructional decisions. Examining how federal legislation approaches racial disparities in special education and its emphasis on personnel preparation for students with disabilities, the authors argue that recruiting, preparing, and sustaining racialized teachers is more complex than simply focusing on their racialized identities.

Introduction

This case demonstrates how school administrators’ development of intersectional competence can mitigate racial inequity in special education. Intersectional competence refers to educators’ preparedness to (a) recognize how schooling is implicated in multiple, intersecting systems of oppression, (b) collaborate with relevant stakeholders who themselves navigate multiple social marginalizations, and (c) consider sociocultural differences while making instructional decisions (Boveda, 2016; Boveda & Aronson, 2019). We begin by briefly examining how the federal legislation driving special education and personnel preparation for students with disabilities approaches issues of racial disparities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), initially enacted as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, was a pivotal legislation that established and supported a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities. The original policy, however, did not explicitly address the intersectionality of exclusionary practices experienced by Students of Color due to race and disability. The reauthorization of IDEA in 1990 first included language in the federal law that explicitly address race and racial disproportionality in special education, such as the overrepresentation of “minority” students in specific disability categories. This reauthorization also linked the issue of disproportionality to the racial composition of the teacher workforce:

Minorities comprised 21.3 percent of the national population at that time and were clearly underrepresented then among employed teachers. Today, the elementary and secondary teaching force is 3 to 5 percent minority, while one-third of the students in public schools are minority children. (IDEA, 1990 Section 610 (j) (1) (C) (v))

The most recent reauthorization (IDEA, 2004) continued to address the proportionality of racialized teachers and students in special education. In this case study, we elucidate the affordances and limitations of the most recent reauthorization of IDEA and its framing of the racial demographics and preparation of the special education teacher workforce. For example, Part A Subchapter 1 Section 1400 of IDEA recognizes that the number of minoritized students in public schools is increasing and suggests that the number of minoritized special education personnel also needs to increase to meet the educational needs of these students. It reads:

(c) (10) (D) With such changing demographics, recruitment efforts for special education personnel should focus on increasing the participation of minorities in the teaching profession in order to provide appropriate role models with sufficient knowledge to address the special education needs of these students.

We agree with the value of recruiting racially minoritized teachers into the special teacher education workforce yet underscore that Teachers of Color are not merely “role models,” as the law suggests. That is, recruiting and sustaining racialized teachers is more complex than simply focusing on their racialized identities. Moreover, IDEA stresses teacher preparation and professional development, stating:

(c) (5) (E) supporting high-quality, intensive preservice preparation and professional development for all personnel who work with children with disabilities in order to ensure that such personnel have the skills and knowledge necessary to improve the academic achievement and functional performance of children with disabilities, including the use of scientifically based instructional practices, to the maximum extent possible.

Preparing and supporting special education Teachers of Color is critical. School administrators are often the Local Education Agency representatives overseeing the proper implementation of IDEA within a school site. They also play a substantial role in the recruitment and hiring of the teacher workforce. This case study examines the historical implications of federal policies and special education law through a contemporary account of a special education Teacher of Color. Set in a racially and ethnically diverse region of the United States, it concludes with questions for administrators and school leadership programs to consider how intersectional competence, and its focus on collaborative skills and knowledge of multiple equity concerns, can help support high-quality special education Teachers of Color.

Case Background

The scenario described is a fictionalized account informed by the first author’s experiences, a Latina special education teacher who taught in South Florida. We find a critical need to center racialized educators’ narratives. This is a crucial step in understanding and addressing the issues in urban educational contexts (Boveda & Bhattacharya, 2019), developing intersectional competence, and opening possibilities regarding whose knowledge and experiences matter in special education.

The case takes place in the fourth largest school district in the country, Miami Dade County Public Schools. Miami’s students and families are demographically composed of 69.1% Hispanic or Latino (of any race), 15% Black or African American (only), 13.8% white (only, not Hispanic or Latino), 1.7% Asian, 1.3% two or more races, 0.3% American Indian & Alaska Native, and 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023).

Unlike the predominantly white teacher workforce in the rest of the United States, MDCPS teachers are composed of teachers who self-identify as Hispanic (56.7%), Black (non-Hispanic, 24.9%), white (non-Hispanic, 16.4%) and Other (2.0%). ¹ The administrative staff is similarly diverse, self-identifying as Hispanic (54.3%), Black (non-Hispanic, 31.1%), white (non-Hispanic, 13.7%), and Other ² 0.89% (Assessment, Research, and Data Analysis [ARDA], 2022).

In addition, over 50% of Miami residents are “foreign-born” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). MDCPS is often celebrated for its rich and diverse cultural context. Scholars like Tanya Katerí Hernández (2022) nonetheless documented evidence of Hispanics and immigrants from Latin America demonstrating anti-Black sentiments, including those of African descent.

Case Narrative

Carmen Campos, a Latina novice teacher of mestiza heritage, taught in a self-contained program for students labeled with emotional and behavioral disabilities. ³ She worked at Mulberry Elementary School, a predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood in northwest Miami-Dade County. She and her family immigrated from Central America when she was seven. Carmen grew up in a similar working-class neighborhood near where she worked, but she did not attend the local schools and instead enrolled in public choice schools outside of her community. Her initial teaching preparation was through a district recruitment program intended to bring out-of-field teachers into “hard-to-staff” classrooms. During her college education, Carmen developed a commitment to social justice, which aligned with the stated goals of the recruitment program to raise the academic achievement of minoritized students and those labeled with disabilities.

Mulberry Elementary was one of the few schools in the region with a self-contained program for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. Carmen’s class size changed throughout the year as new students were identified as needing special education services and placed in her class. This year, she had the largest class of her 3 years of teaching. Carmen and the paraprofessional, an older Colombian woman assigned to the class—who at one point went on leave due to a work-related injury—had 14 Kindergarten through third-grade students. Her class comprised 13 boys: 11 identified as Black, one as white, and one as Latino. The only girl in the classroom identified as mixed race (Black and white). Carmen was one of two teachers working with students in the self-contained classrooms. Her colleague, Tiffany Robinson, a Black veteran teacher, taught grades 4-5; 11 students and one paraprofessional were assigned to her class. Ms. Robinson’s paraprofessional was an older Black woman whose grandchildren attended the school.

Carmen’s frustration grew as the year progressed due to the increasing class size and lack of a full-time paraprofessional. She was assigned a part-time paraprofessional to replace the one who went on disability leave. She also felt overwhelmed by the demands of planning, teaching, and assessing four grade levels while making accommodations for the student’s social and emotional needs, as required by their individual education plans. Carmen attempted to advocate for herself and her students. Veteran general education teachers at the school uplifted and mentored Carmen during the rare opportunities she had to share space with them. Still, the other special education personnel questioned her classroom management. Everyone warned her that teaching special education would be difficult. While initially feeling ready for the challenge, she wondered if she was just expecting too much from the experience. Carmen started to feel like the “problem teacher” her 8-week teacher preparation program warned her about. The program characterized teachers who asked questions and challenged taken-for-granted procedures as causing problems and not as advocates for their students and working conditions. She also questioned the advice she received on classroom management, which did not align with her values or her compassionate disposition.

Carmen found an opportunity to express her frustration through an assignment for one of the night courses she took designed to help non-licensed teachers prepare for their teacher certification exams. The instructor often asked the group to journal about their day. This evening, the prompt asked the teachers to write a letter to their “teacher selves.” The letter needed to address a difficulty they were facing and offer advice and reassurance to themselves. Carmen wrote the following letter, addressing herself as “EBD teacher,” a title she often used to introduce herself to other teachers. Much of the letter focused on the deficit-oriented messages Carmen received as a novice teacher:

Dear EBD teacher,

You are not too nice. You don’t care too much, and you are not too patient. You are not perfect. But that is okay; no one is.

I am writing this letter because you need to hear this. You are being told that the reason the students are misbehaving is that you are just too nice.

You need to show them who’s in charge, they say.

You speak too softly, so the students don’t listen to you. Find your teacher’s voice. Practice yelling: Bring the sound from deep in your gut so your voice is loud and carries over all the other shouting. Show them who’s in charge, they say.

But that might not even work because you are also just too little. You look like one of the students yourself. You almost didn’t get hired because you look so small. How can they respect you? They are tough, loud, strong, violent, unruly. Every teacher’s nightmare. You look like a delicate flower, and we are afraid you will just wither, they say.

Go to the physical restraint training. Learn how to use your weight and throw them on a mat when they present a danger to you, others, or themselves. Do it when they are upset; they are dangerous after all, and you don’t know what they might do. Do it when they talk back. Show them who’s the boss, they say.

Make sure they walk in a straight line. One behind the other. All shirts tucked in. Make sure they are quiet. Have them put their fingers to their lips. Then everyone will see and know that you are in charge, they say.

Use a point system. Don’t be afraid to subtract points. Send a daily report home and let them know that they need enough points to make it to Fun Friday. Those who make it can have all the treats and fun, and those who don’t can just watch. They will learn, they say.

And don’t think about quitting. You’ll be just like the others. Too weak to handle it. It won’t be the first time a “nice” teacher comes and quits on them, they say.

Look, EBD teacher, I am not here to tell you what to do. You already have plenty of people doing that. But I do want you to know that what your gut tells you is wrong is wrong.

No one deserves to be treated this way. Your students deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Your students need compassion, care, kindness, and understanding.

I want you to know that you don’t have to be big, loud, physically strong, and the sole authority in the room to be a good teacher. Caring and understanding are not a sign of weakness. They are your strength.

Take it one day at a time. Trust yourself. Be your authentic self. Learn to use your authentic voice.

The letter helped Carmen articulate considerable frustrations with the teaching profession, compounded by the class size and staffing challenges she heard about in her teacher preparation or union meetings. It revealed the carceral logic, the punishment mindset related to prison, present in schooling and the role she played as a Latina special education teacher working with predominantly Black students. Carmen did not know which was worse: the physical exhaustion from simultaneously teaching four grade levels or the emotional toll of carrying the weight of her students’ futures. She considered whether she and her colleagues perpetuated the school-to-prison pipeline, the discipline system that labels racialized people as criminals or rulebreakers and marks them for extraction from “community to captivity, from school to prison” (Strayhorn, 2021, pp. 604). This dynamic has also been referred to as a school/prison nexus, given how the surveillance and punishment aspects of schooling often enforce a carceral logic (see Hines et al., 2021).

Weeks after writing this letter, she took advantage of a meeting with the principal, who wanted to discuss one of his classroom observations with her. The principal, Dr. Grant, was the only white man at the school. He proudly told his staff that he was an adjunct at a local university, which made Carmen hope he valued the vulnerability of her letter.

Teaching Notes

In designing a tool intended to measure how preservice teachers in teacher education programs make connections across multiple equity concerns (e.g., disability categorizations, assessments for emerging multilingual, and culturally responsive pedagogy), Boveda (2016) introduced the intersectional competence construct. Anchoring the development of the Intersectional Competence Measure in intersectionality as conceptualized by Black feminist theorists (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989), as well as in the collaborative teacher education literature (e.g., Pugach & Blanton, 2009)—intersectional competence addresses educators,’ understanding of the convergence of their own personal and professional identities, multiple classifications of sociocultural differences, and how these markers of difference manifest in social marginalization. For example, Carmen’s professional identity as a novice, uncertified special education teacher intersects with her identity as a first-generation working-class woman.

Also, as noted in the introduction, an essential aspect of intersectional competence is recognizing how schooling is implicated in multiple intersecting systems of oppression. Thus, taking a step back and considering the historical context of minoritized students and teachers in special education is also essential. For example, The Brown v. Board of Education ruling marked a significant milestone for the racial desegregation of schools and a significant victory for the Civil Rights movement. It also provided the foundation for further educational changes. The emphasis on desegregation resulting from Brown informed how parents and disability activists mobilized to confront the exclusion of students with disabilities from public education (Blanchett, 2009). As such, the Brown ruling gave way to arguments for the right to an education for students with disabilities (Blanchett et al., 2005; Hines et al., 2021; Yell, 2019). These policy changes, however, did not explicitly address the intersectionality of ableism and racism with other systems of oppression. Despite special education emerging from efforts inspired by the Civil Rights and Disability Rights movements, scholars nonetheless critique how its practices aggravate racial injustice (e.g., Connor et al., 2008; Hines et al., 2021). As early as 1968, before the establishment of what became IDEA, scholars critiqued the large percentage of “racially and/or economically disadvantaged children ” in special education (Dunn, 1968, p. 9). By 1990, disproportionality, such as the overrepresentation of Native American and Black students in disability categories, such as the “EBD” students assigned to Carmen, was well documented and addressed in the reauthorization of IDEA.

Another (un)intended consequence of the Brown decision, which holds implications for the above case and the racial composition of the teacher workforce, was the significant reduction of the Black teacher workforce and the increase of Students of Color taught by white teachers (Hudson & Holmes, 1994). As alluded to in the introduction, the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA brings attention to the lack of parity between the increasingly increasing racially and ethnically diverse students with disabilities and the overwhelming white teacher workforce.

Furthermore, specific to the case narrative and considering the language in IDEA about “minority teachers,” Carmen, a Latina immigrant teacher, does not necessarily see herself as a role model for the predominantly Black and male students she serves. Moreover, Black male teachers have pushed back against the reductive notion that their role is primarily to function as role models when serving as special education teachers (see Cormier, 2020). Teachers of Color may often find themselves outnumbered, isolated, and experiencing what Mason-Williams et al. (2023) identify as intersectional professional vulnerability:

teachers whose own sociocultural identities or whose students’ sociocultural identities were marginalized based on race/ethnicity, disability, or socioeconomic status experienced weaker access to crucial social resources; weaker access to social resources contributed to weaker intent to continue teaching. For [special education teachers], these findings may be essential for improving retention, especially among [special education teachers] of color in schools serving more marginalized students. (p. 11)

Applying an intersectional lens and drawing from intersectional collaborative tools, we encourage leaders to examine their expectations for racialized teachers to work with colleagues, administrators, and other related service providers while making sense of the complex needs of racialized students and Teachers of Color. Administrators can practice intersectional competence by openly engaging in conversations promoting self-awareness and inclusive mindsets. In this article’s classroom activity and discussion questions section, we present questions to help guide conversations that promote reflection, discussion, and action that will lead to inclusive and supportive schools for minoritized teachers and students in special education. Without scaffolding for intersectional competence, teachers like Carmen will continue to experience disempowerment, ineffective partnerships, and an increased sense of professional isolation.

This case is for students in leadership, in-service professional development, and educational policy courses. The case allows readers to consider their sociocultural identity and apply intersectional competence when working collaboratively.

Considerations for Developing Intersectional Competence

As a cautionary note, engaging this single case study and discussion questions are starting points to help readers develop intersectional competence (see Boveda & Weinberg, 2022). Developing intersectional competence involves intentional and routine practice. Below, we include additional questions informed by Boveda and Bhattacharya (2019) to consider as you work to develop intersectional competence:

• Think about your district’s demographics in the case above and of your own district’s demographics.

• • How might this knowledge impact your practice as an administrator?

Learn about the groups’ histories from the case study and in your district.

• How might this knowledge impact your practice as an administrator?

Consider what you have learned about federal laws and special education history from the case above and search through the references in this article to read more about the intersections of race and special education history.

What effect might knowing about this history have on administrators from different sociocultural groups? (i.e., administrators with or without disabilities, administrators from minoritized communities.)

What effect might knowing about this history have on administrators working with special education teachers? What effect might knowing about this history have on administrators working with general education teachers?

Classroom Activity and Discussion Questions (Adapted from Boveda & Weinberg, 2020)

Working in groups of four or five, each member will advise the principal on addressing Carmen’s concerns regarding class size, instructional support, staffing, and the school culture. While everyone is tasked with constructing their advice, each member must receive feedback from their group members.

• In constructing the advice, consider your own sociocultural identity. Identify at least five of your sociocultural markers (for example, race, linguistic origin, educational level, geographic/regional origin, socioeconomic status, class, citizenship, ethnicity, gender identification, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, immigration status, dis/ability, family structure, health, beliefs, values).

Get to know the teachers and students in the case study. Consider Carmen’s professional identity and list them. (for example, years of teaching, race/ethnicity, etc.)

Consider the other teachers and students mentioned in the case narrative. List their sociocultural identities. How might the information learned/gathered about teachers’ and students’ sociocultural markers be used to inform decisions?

Get to know your group members. Share some of the sociocultural markers you think will help your group members understand you.

Discuss how these sociocultural markers may influence your practice as a school administrator.

Take turns co-constructing a plan for the next steps the principal in the case study should take.

What roles and responsibilities will each teacher, staff member, and administrator be encouraged to take on? How do these leverage respective experiences, strengths, expertise, or skills? What concerns are there about these roles and responsibilities?

What is the process of disrupting/interrupting inequities that arise due to identity-based or other power differences?