Special Education in Charter Schools 
(Keynote)
Saturday, June 2, 2018
12:00 - 12:45 pm

The Irony of Rigor : ‘No Excuses’ Charter Schools at the Intersections of Race and Disability
Across the United States, the “no excuses” charter school movement featuring strict discipline policies and rigorous academic standards has gained popularity among schools serving poor and working-class students of color. In this presentation, I examine how Black and Latinx parents of students with disabilities  negotiated and experienced these charter school practices of rigor, which disciplined, managed, and regulated students’ social difference. Drawing from a yearlong qualitative research study, I examine interviews with Black and Latinx parents who experienced conflict with charter schools and their lawyers, along with school artifacts we gathered such as parent handbooks and website information. Parents experienced what I refer to as the irony of rigor: the contradictory double-movement through which students of color with disabilities desired inclusion into “rigorous” charter schools which then excluded them using “rigor” as a central feature of student pushout practices. I present the irony of rigor in three interrelated acts:  Act I: The Lure of Rigor (i.e., what drew parents to charter schools); Act II: The Body Meets Rigor (i.e., how schools disciplined and managed student differences); and Act III: The Consequences of Rigor (i.e., what happened to students and parents while and after experiencing rigorous practices). Contextualizing the irony of rigor within the relationship between disability, race, and neoliberalism, I offer recomendations for advocacy efforts. 

Dr. Federico Waitoller 
Dr. Waitoller is an associate professor at the department of special education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research examines how neoliberal educational polices (e.g., top-down accountability, portfolio district models, and school choice) affect the experiences of Black and Latinx students with disabilities. Dr. Waitoller is also interested in examining how these inequities are affected by the production of space in urban economies and the role of teacher learning and school/university partnerships in developing capacity for inclusive education.   Dr. Waitoller has received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Minority Dissertation Fellowship, a Faculty Fellowship from the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and more recently he was the recipient of a Spencer Foundation Grant. 

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