Pushing Out Black Students With Disabilities Under COVID-19
Over the past two turbulent weeks, empty public schools and barren playgrounds have become stark symbols of how COVID-19 has exacerbated structural inequality. Massive layoffs, food insecurity, and lethal gaps in sick leave, healthcare, childcare provision, housing, and transportation have always been a way of life for people of color, but the pandemic has further exposed this Rubicon as a neoliberal nightmare—the spectral chickens of Reaganomics come to roost.
The recent wave of district-wide school closures highlights their importance as some of the few remaining public “sheltering” spaces where vulnerable children can receive wraparound social welfare services.
The recent wave of district-wide school closures highlights their importance as some of the few remaining public “sheltering” spaces where vulnerable children can receive wraparound social welfare services.
The recent wave of district-wide school closures highlights their importance as some of the few remaining public “sheltering” spaces where vulnerable children can receive wraparound social welfare services. The shutdowns not only impact classroom instruction, but the mental health care provided by scores of psychiatric social workers, nurses, healthy start coordinators, speech therapists, and other support staff who do their work on the precipice of budget cuts and Orwellian government bureaucracy.
For this reason, the COVID breakdown has already proven to be disastrous for children with disabilities. These youth are criminally underserved when it comes to quality classroom instruction in real time. Although they are confronted with a huge technology gap in the COVID age, the gap in instructional time and support services remains a primary issue because special needs students are even more prone to being isolated and pushed out when school schedules are disrupted.
Nationwide, approximately 67% of students with disabilities graduate from high school, versus 84% of students without disabilities. Due to deeply ingrained racist cultural expectations, poverty, and “lower” high stakes test scores, African American students are more likely to be identified as having learning disabilities. However, they typically do not receive the wraparound services that they need to support their learning and social-emotional development (there is recent data, contested by researchers at the Center for CONTINUE READING: Pushing Out Black Students With Disabilities Under COVID-19 - LA Progressive