Hi friends, it's Tim Villegas from the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education, and I'm coming to you from my living room. Yep, switching it up just a little bit because sometimes I just I get tired of sitting at my desk facing a wall. So thank you for hitting play on this episode of thinking inclusive, where every week we bring you conversations about inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world.
Okay, so, research is one of my favorite things. I actually enjoy reading research articles. And so if that's you, too, you are going to love this episode. If it's not you, I think you are going to be very pleasantly surprised at how relevant this conversation is. Imagine if you are a parent of a child that has an individualized education program, and you are looking around for a neighborhood to move into and you email the school principal of your potential neighborhood school and request a school tour. Once the principal realizes that your child has an IEP, what do you think will happen? That is exactly what our guests did for her research, and then she even took it a step further. Lauren Rivera, a professor at Northwestern University is a well respected researcher who studies discrimination in hiring practices, as it affects social structures based on social class, gender and race. Her recent research article examines the challenges of families with children with disabilities in accessing an equitable education, bringing her personal perspective as a parent of a child with disabilities to her work. Rivera's research has been featured in high profile publications such as the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, and now thinking cluesive. Lauren shares groundbreaking findings from her study on principals discriminatory behavior towards families with children with disabilities. This groundbreaking research were over 20,000 school principals in four states were contacted through a field experiment aimed at uncovering discrimination at the very beginning of educational access the school tour request process. Reverse study examined the response rate to emails requesting school tours, varying the presence of an individualized education program for the child and the perceived race of the parents. The results were eye opening, revealing a pervasive pattern of discrimination against children with IEPs, which was significantly more pronounced if the child was also perceived to be from a black family. The research sheds light not only on the discriminatory challenges encountered before enrollment, but also on the stressors such experiences impose on families searching for educational settings for their children. Do you believe that all children with and without disabilities deserve to reach their potential through inclusive education? If so, you'll love Brooks publishing the premier publisher of books and tools on early childhood special education, communication and language and more. Brooks publishing has been partnering with top experts for over 30 years to bring you the best resources for your classroom, clinic or home. To learn more visit Brooks publishing.com. To browse their catalogue, read their blog and sign up for their newsletter. Brooks publishing, helping you make a difference in the lives of all children. And just for thinking cluesive listeners visit bi T dot L y slash Brooks dash giveaway dash 0224 to put your name in to win a copy of assessing young children in inclusive settings, the blended practices approach by Dr. Christy, Preti Frontech we'll be taking names until the end of the month. After a short break my interview with Lauren Rivera and for free time this week. I'm going to give you some tips on finding podcasts that you may find interesting. Stick around we'll be right back.
I'm Lauren Rivera, welcome to the thing conclusive podcast.
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
So Lauren, you shared with us some really interesting research and I have been really excited to have you on to talk about it. And so you published a research article in the American Sociological Review called not in my school, your disability discrimination in education access. And it showed some really surprising behavior by school principals with regard to access to access for families with children with disabilities. So if you wouldn't mind, would you summarize that research for us? Definitely,
we did a study looking at how principals respond to initial requests from families for information about a school and in particular, we used the most common way that families across class and racial backgrounds seek out information from about schools, which was a request for school tours. So we emailed in a sealed experiment, over 20,000 principals in four states. And we requested a school tour. And we varied whether or not the child that was mentioned in the email did or did not have an IEP. And I'm happy to talk about how we signal that, as well as whether the email came from a parent who was perceived as black or white. And we found that principals were significantly less likely to respond when they believed that the child who could potentially be in their school was had an IEP, we did not designate disabilities within the IEP or accommodations. And again, I'm happy to talk about that. But that gap was bigger, or especially less likely to respond. It was a child who had an IEP who had a parent who was perceived as black. And so what our findings show us is that discrimination on the basis of both disability and race occur even before children are enrolled in schools. And sometimes people ask, why does it matter school tour, when we think about schools, in the United States, many families approach the choice of school, especially given you know, school choice and these sorts of things now, as a marketplace, and they're looking for a school that fits their child and can best meet their educational needs. And families, regardless of a child's learning needs or disability status, often prioritize that in deciding where to live or choosing where to send their families to send their children to school. But that choice is even more important for children who have a disability. Because even though that cetera the Ag e which is a federal anti discrimination law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability status and public education, mandates that kids are supposed to get what they need to thrive. We know that's not the case, not all schools offer all programming. Not all schools actually treat their mandate under the IDE a as something more than just paperwork, compliance. And I'm happy to provide examples of a particularly high risk and high stakes examples. But that idea of finding a school that fits is even more important for kids who have specialized learning needs, or have need supports in order to to learn and to stay safe.
Well, first, let's let's unpack the the details of the study because you said 20,000 school principals, like how are these schools and principals selected? You said in the initial email, it was more of a signaling that a family was was a certain racial background, and then also whether or not they have, you know, a disability. So how did that how did that all play out? Yeah,
so we have an amazing research assistant on this project was so patient, but we went to state databases of schools, and that research assistant, manually created a database. And then we randomly selected principals. From those schools, we have some exclusion criteria. They needed to be you know, typical public schools and things like this, we excluded those that are more vocationally oriented or this was before the pandemic, so schools that were fully virtual before the pandemic, but it represents Elementary, Middle High School, the whole gamut. And so we one of the things that's important in research is that you're not cherry picking schools that might conform to your hypotheses. And so it was random selection of every school in each of these four states. So then the idea of signaling. So let me tell you a little bit about this is technically an audit experiment. And let me tell you about what audit experiments are. So audit experiments have a long history that began in racial discrimination in housing. And how this method arose was, you know, back in the 50s 60s 70s, in order to understand redlining and racial discrimination in housing, there were studies that were conducted where you'd send identically matched individuals who are identical and everything except for race into a real estate office. And you say, these are my housing needs, please show me some properties. And you'd see if the what was shown to the person who walked into your, at your office was significantly different based off the racial identity of that person. And we in the social psychology and economics and in my field of sociology world have taken, taken that method and adapted it to correspondence. So we call them correspondence audits. And what we do is we send requests to individuals, and then we measure what the differences in responses, we usually send identical materials and bury them on one or two variables of interest. Now, the audit studies are more commonly done in an employment. So my main field of expertise is hiring discrimination. We'll take a resume, and we'll identify something that we want to study, say race, or in my case, I do a lot of research on class, or gender. And the resumes are identical. Other than those identity characteristics, we send them out to real employers and response to real job ads, and we see who is invited to interview. Now, audit methods are most commonly done in employment. But recently, in the past five or six years, we've seen a lot more in access to public administrators, public officials, and there are several studies now looking at audit studies of principals. And we're school other school officials. And so by sending the identical materials to principals and varying our one or two categories of interests, we can more precisely estimate what the difference is been response is based off an identity characteristic. And we can be more sure that because materials are otherwise identical, that the differences we observe are indeed due to the identity characteristic rather than anything else, right. So these audit methods are considered to be really strong ways of measuring differential treatment on the basis of an identity characteristics such as race or disability status in our case. Now, to tell you a little bit about the signaling aspect of this, we went into this study, and we really wanted to understand whether or not principals were in a sense steering disabled children and families away from their neighborhoods.
It sounds like in your field, this type of research is pretty common. But my question is, like, why was figuring this out for schools important to you like as a researcher?
Oh, yeah. Okay. So in this study, the inspiration from this study came from a few places. One is that my research expertise is in discrimination. And so I study though, how the way in which we define merit, evaluate merit, and respond to different different people varies by identity characteristics, most of my research looks at social class and gender. But how the study actually came about was through my own personal experience. So I have a five year old daughter who has a variety of complex medical needs and disabilities, and I had a job offer to potentially move from Northwestern to another institution. And in that position, like many families, I was trying to figure out what would our lives look like for our kids, and one of those was figuring out what our children's schooling lives would be. And so I started emailing schools, as one does. And I also have it all seem to be eight year old son who's able bodied. Right? And so I when I would email schools for my son, I got emails, written response really quickly, here's our school tour date. Sure, I'm happy to talk that to you. But then when I sent emails for my daughter, it was radio silence, and it was really strange. I was thinking what is going on here until finally I got a school official on the phone and there was be given the close age at the time, my children could have gone to the same school, depending on their their age levels, and it was an official from a public program. And they said, Well, you can come tour our school if you look through the eyes of your able bodied son, but not if you look through the eyes of your non disabled daughter. And
they actually said that,
yeah, well, they didn't say the ability part. But we talked about the disability part. He said, Yeah, you can call me Fitz. If you look throughout As your viewers on, but not your daughter, right? And so, as someone who studies discrimination again, people don't often understand, especially in light of recent ruling, what discrimination is. Discrimination, how we measure it in the social sciences is differential treatment or responses on the basis of that characteristic, right? Doesn't have to be conscious or intentional or things like this, right? And so that to me, as a researcher, there, a light went off. This is discrimination, right. And so I went to my longtime co author on drudge to chick, who's at the University of Toronto, and I said, handwash, like, I think this might be a theme, let's say if this was more than my personal experience, and I was Tereus, both for as a sociologist, and as a parent, what was going on here. And so we embarked on this study, and I'm so fortunate to have on Russia's co author, he's a wizard when it comes to audit studies. And it turns out, it's a thing, it's not just us. And the reason why we varied both whether or not the child had an IP, as well as the race of the person of the parent. And I'm happy to talk about why we didn't think know the race of the child, is that if you take a look at the existing literature, on inequalities in education, and in special education, in particular, the experience of students in education, getting full stop is dramatically shaped by race, but especially in special education. And so whenever you talk about the experience of children with disabilities in schools, raises one fundamental way in which children may be treated differently. So we thought it was important to capture this. And indeed, we did find that principals were responding differently to families and these officials tore requests on the basis of the perceived disability status of the child. And it was a greater gap in responsiveness if they perceived that the child was black.
Wow. And then, so you did this, you reached out to all these principals for school tours. But then you did something else too, and a little unclear. So you you gave the same principles surveys, is that right? Are you getting no Oh, not the same principles? Just principles in general? Okay.
Well, this auditing method, where are we said, Take resumes to real employers, or we send these emails to principals and we measure her response are amazing for isolating discrimination from other factors, as well as measuring the extent of discrimination in terms of this differential response rate. What they're less good at doing is understanding why we see the gaps in behavior are the differences in behavior we do, right, we just see that behavior response, no response. And so we followed up with a separate study that was a survey experiment of school principals. And we did not want to go back to the same principles, because one of the things with the audit method is that you are responding as if you're contacting a principal as if you're a real parent, right. And so if we went back to the same principles, they would already be familiar with your email, their responses wouldn't necessarily be true reflections of how they might behave. Right. So we went to when needed a fresh group of individuals. So we went to the next four largest states in terms of school enrollment, and there was also geographic diversity. And we sampled school principals. And we presented them both with the same materials we had in our experiment. We told them that it was, we were studying how principles, evaluate various texts, communications, etc. And the task was always sandwiched in between two other tasks so that they didn't necessarily know where study, one was, they had evaluated a book that was not about education, and not about discrimination. And the last one was a school menu. But in between, they saw the communication that we had sent to the school from parents, and they were randomly assigned to whether or not they saw the IP, no IP condition, the white condition, and we had the first decide what to do with it. So there's a drop down menu where they could choose to respond or just click through to ignore it. And we replicated the same findings in terms of they were less likely to compose a response when the child hadn't compete, and the gap was significantly larger when they believe that that really was black. It we had higher response rates in general, if people replying, just because the cost of doing click here is less than actually offering a school tour that the same effects were were present. And then we had them read the child in that email and appeared on a variety of factors, because we're trying to understand the mechanisms that may produce this differential response rate. And we found that they believed that children with an IEP were more of a temporal financial and otherwise resource burden on schools. But and that explained the IEP effect. But that didn't explain the racial effect. The racial effect was actually driven by perceptions of black parents of children with IEPs, who were perceived as less good school community members, they're like less likely to donate, fundraise participate, and cetera. And so what we talked about in the study is that when we come to intersectionality, which is what we talk about how different identities mix, the experiment, experience of disability varies, for example, by race, and that these black parents of children with disabilities are encountering two different types of discrimination. They're encountering less favorable perceptions of their children, that their children are a drain, perhaps on schools, which I do not believe I just want to make Connect. But then also they as parents are devalued. So again, with sociology, a lot of these results are are powerful and saddening. Right. But the idea is that by that sunlight is the best disinfectant, right? That by revealing these types of patterns, we can make people aware and hopefully craft social policy in a way to ameliorate them.
It's fascinating that you were able to bring in something that was so personal to you, and really apply it to, to your research, and then and then get such really fascinating and compelling evidence. This, this work must have been pretty fulfilling, I would imagine. I think fulfilling is the wrong word.
unemotional, laborious. And, no. It is interesting when research and personal identity collide. Again, I am an expert in discrimination. That's what I do. And I felt that I have a unique toolkit that might really be used to study this used to be careful to make sure you're not going into a study and exhibiting confirmation bias, right, we didn't know we're gonna find. And I don't think we would have predicted precisely the findings, we pre registered our experiment, I'm happy to talk about what that means that we expected something a little different to happen. But I'm glad that I can shed a light on this. Both are school officials and for families, because I think qualitatively you've talked to it. And we did for part of the study. We interviewed families whose children rode disabled and they are reporting not only once they're in schools, but even before these discriminatory actions and unequal treatment that are really challenging and make it really hard to find appropriate educational FETs but also are just taxing right in terms of emotional time burdens and things like this. And so it's, it's again, it's fulfilling that I can shed a light and hopefully maybe be a small step towards towards crafting some sort of change. But it is, you know, it is it is it there is an emotional labor involved in demonstrating that society. And yet another dimension was brought up by I mean, again, now about being a parent of a substantially disabled kid, like you know, it's it's a reminder that lights are unveiling intellectually, perhaps but also emotionally. Yeah,
no, that's that's real. That's real. I don't know this was in the study, if you parse this out, but were there any significant differences depending on the location of the school? Because, you know,
yeah, we found we threw everything in there because we thought maybe more well resourced schools would exhibit this last because in that's often what we hear is I live in Chicago and Chicago Public Schools is a notoriously under resourced district, but it's also one that has had a lot of media attention for shenanigans related to to the education of disabled children. And the lore here is moved to the suburbs and people throw resources at you because they have more resources. We didn't find that to hold. This is a pretty universal phenomenon, and how Other states, it held across as well in schools, non affluent schools, majority white schools, majority non white schools, free or reduced price lunch, and is this kind of a more general trend. And why that matters is that it is really tapping something fundamental about the way in which we conceptualize and evaluate the worth of individuals based off of their disability status and about the based on their race.
So in the in the research summary article, that that's posted on Kellogg, there is you have a quote, it says principals are the gatekeepers. They control whether to spend money, meaning one child's IEP versus investing programs that serve a larger percentage of the student, students body or the student body. So like, does it just all come down to whether or not the principal is has the mindset to accept children? Is it is it just about the money? Like, what what exactly is it? So
there are a couple of things going on here, principals, I don't want to say to blame principals, right, are operating in an environment in which they're put in a really rough place. The IDE a mandates that every child who has been identified with a qualified educational disability in the public education system needs to receive the supports and resources they need to meet or move closer to grade level educational goals. Yet, when when Congress authorized the IBA, they promised to fund 40% of the cost of doing so and and never come even close. And so especially given an environment, we have to decrease available funding for public education in general. Principles are put in a really rough spot, right? They need more resources, public education needs more resources. So I don't want this article to be read as something that's portraying principles as as doing this in a irrational way, but it's still discriminatory and unfortunate. The other thing I want to say is that they're not the only actors here, right? They're school students, service directors, their school districts and things like this. certain levels of funding, etc, are not necessarily sent by principals. But in terms of what it housed in their school, principals have a lot of authority over what happens within their doors, right, in terms of where classroom space is allocated? How are we going to spend this money? Are we going to spend it getting a specialized piece of equipment that will serve one child, or investing in a program that can meet others? In addition, you know, they are these informational gatekeepers. One thing that's so striking about this is that, you know, children have a wide variety of educational needs. And there's no clearinghouse to look at which programs are offered, where it requires a lot of informal research to figure out where the appropriate supports are located. And principals play a key role in this because they know what happens in their doors and can't just go look up on the website to see okay, where is a program that has AAC specialists? For those of you who don't know what AAC is, it's augmentative, and alternative communication for children who have communication differences, you principals now, and so the information that they provide is, is really, really important. And so another thing that we might think of is that maybe there is some way to make more transparent where resources lie, reduce that the dependence on walls, but again, principles played an important role, but they are only one agent and this whole story. And I think it's important that our study is not what happens once you're enrolled in school. I would love any, we can draw inferences that maybe people would be left with Once you're enrolled. But it really is about this initial gatekeeping. But there are two other points I just want to make really quickly is that principals do actually have some discretion over who and rules. And so there's a great study done by an Adela RO, who just retired from University of Pennsylvania, but who's one of the world's greatest sociologists of education, and some co authors about about public school enrollment. And she finds that in the case of limited spots when it's a desirable district or a desirable school, or if it's subject to school choice, principals actually can say, Hey, I'd rather have this student rather than that so they can have discretion. Or in the city of Chicago, we actually have this thing called principal discretion week, that for selective enrollment schools or otherwise, there is a week where you can actually the principal can say, Hey, I'd rather have you versus you. And so it's not just that principals only control internal resources, they do control access to information about their schools. And in some cases, they actually can have say, and who doesn't doesn't come in. We interviewed a family who, for the research, who also because sometimes people say, Well, what if you just move into the district and they have to take you, not all educational needs are met in a neighborhood school. Some districts handle it differently. But there was this one family that we interviewed. And they reported going up to sign up for I believe it was kindergarten, right. And they walked up to their neighborhood school. And the assistant principal was standing up front of the school and said, if your kid is autistic, we don't want you here. Right, and stood and said, right. And so this is not I'm not saying this is the modal interaction, but we've Interactions matter. Yeah. And so, again, whether it's driven by stereotypes and animus surrounding individuals with disabilities, which I think it is, in part, or if it's driven from resource constraints, which I think it is, in part, it's important to know that this is indeed discrimination. And a lot of people may not be know, but I believe it's a section Hamblen member, if it's the Rehabilitation Act, or if it's, you know, I have to look at it, there is a piece of legislation that says, You can't discriminate in advertising, right on the basis of disabilities that if so, it is also a legally suspect action.
Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. But so quickly, I want to tell you a story. Because it reminds me a family. I live in Georgia. I work for MCIE, which is in Maryland, but I live in Georgia. So it's just a, you know, it's the world we live in right now with remote work. But there's a family in Georgia, and they have a daughter with Down syndrome. And over the last couple of years, their neighborhood school said, No, your child cannot come go to your neighborhood school with the siblings of this little girl. She has to go to another school. And so the family revoked special education services for the child with Down syndrome. And then the school is forced to enroll the child in the neighborhood school without services. So there's more to that story. But it's a great reminder that it's, you know, it's not about the the needs of the child. That is not the determiner of whether or not they go to their if they're supported in their neighborhood school. It's, it's completely the willingness of, of that school of the of the district. It
also one of the things I want to talk about in that is that we saw in many districts in many states have an approach to special education, where we isolate or segregate students with disabilities regardless of their support needs. And actually, if they can be served in a general education classroom, we warehouse kids, right, and that is still very common. Not to say that, you know, inclusion for children with many needs can be beneficial. But inclusion is also resource intensive. Inclusion is not let's just put everyone together, like you said, and not yet people are born, they be thoughtful about this, but I think of my home district in Chicago, and I have to say my daughter is enrolled in Chicago public schools, and I am so grateful to her therapist to her teachers, we found some amazing people. But it is it is wild. She is transitioning from preschool to kindergarten, and she's a wheelchair user. There are over 600 schools in Chicago public schools. In fact, Chicago Public School serves more schoolchildren. So the same goes, I don't know if this doctor by back then all school children in the state of Nevada. And when it comes to an educational fit, where the building is wheelchair accessible, and they have the supports she needs. There were fewer than four schools in the whole city that our elementary schools that she could go to, and you talk about wanting to go to your neighborhood school with a sibling, right? We're talking in Chicago public schools, you know, some of these places kids may be on a bus for five hours a day, right, two and a half hours each way. Right? And this idea of where you go to school is an issue of Will I get the support I want or not I want I should say that I need in order to thrive, but also, how does that affect the rest of the family unit? How does that affect the child if you're on a bus for five hours every day? You know, it's there's a lot at stake here that sometimes people say Oh, well, just when they hear the results of the studies, just go enroll in your neighborhood school. Like that moving into the catchment zone does not necessarily guarantee that you will be able to be educated there. Or if you are educated there that you'll get the support you need. Yeah.
One of my favorite parts of reading research is future implications. I wonder why it's just, it's, I love a reading and hearing what researchers kind of like want to do next or looking towards the future. So what were some of those future implications? Do you have anything in mind where you want to go next.
So I have a study that is co authored with Estella Diaz, who is a phenomenal PhD student who just graduated from Columbia, that's going to be a postdoc at Princeton, we actually are looking at it. And this is related to the Supreme Court ruling. From yesterday, we're looking at admissions decisions, to elite private schools, the ones that go pre K through 12, and serve as feeders to Ivy League colleges, we are actually finding that disability status is something that they are overtly and intentionally screening on their private schools. So they have different obligations than public schools to to meet or to not exclude children with various disabilities. But we are we are doing that. But I think that what I said to you about this being emotionally draining is shaping my my research agenda as well. I have two studies that are basically reaffirming that children like my daughter are other and not welcome. And I was allowed to be involved in policy efforts to make education more equitable at all levels. But in terms of doing more research on disability discrimination, I need to take a pause for my own well being, I always joke I should do like a study of, you know, something fun, like bound crowds and ethnography of bounce houses, or birthday parties or something uplifting. But I think that, you know, I'm doing more studies, my traditional line of research, which is, is hiring and things like this, but I hope to continue this research on a policy basis, because I think we are doing a tremendous disservice to our children by not fully funding it yet. But on a broader level, you know, this is, even though I'm not here to study more disability discrimination, I'd like to bring awareness about the idea of death, disability discrimination to a wider audience, because I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. As someone who is very, very involved in dei discussions on the basis of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, you name it, disability is one of those that gets left out, it's treated as yet the stereotypes and exclusion, that individuals with disabilities face in the United States are so great. And disability is one of those categories that many people will fall into their lives will fall into it. And if we're all lucky enough to live long enough, we all well, given that individuals with disabilities in the United States are estimated to be roughly a quarter of the population at any one given time. This is an area in which drastically more attention and effort needs to be made in terms of creating both equity and inclusion. So I'd like to, you know, do more work to raise awareness and things like this, but studies of the fate of kids like my daughter in schools, I'm going to put a pause
on it. Yeah, that's ruff, ruff. Well, it's, you know, speaking of policy, you know, we've had Ida for a while. Is it? I mean, do we really, should we be thinking about it as we need fundamental changes in the law? Or is it really just the accountability piece that's missing? You know, I mean, notwithstanding the funding, you know, who knows if we're gonna get funding, fully, fully funded, but, you know, there are certain aspects of Ida that that don't seem to be enforced.
Yeah, there's a great book by Christina Bovary days looking at it's called does compliance matter and special education and it's an ethnography of the provision of special education services in several school districts, and she finds that school districts vary whether or not they take the ID up, again as a paperwork burden to comply with on paper versus complying in the spirit of the law, which is actually provide supports that enable children with disabilities to access education in a way that is productive and grow. And the ID EA is It is hard, right? I think all anti discrimination legislation that we have around disability status is hard. The EDA is hard, you know, it's these laws are not necessarily written in a way that is optimal. But we do need some sort of legal protection. But one of the things I have here, and I have to tell you that I'm not a lawyer, right? I mean, my policy application is like, increase the funding, right? Because right now, it is perceived so much as a zero sum game. But I think that in large school districts, and this would be supported, at least by journalistic accounts right now, to my awareness, there's been limited academic research on it. But there's kind of this game of chicken going on between school districts and families over the ID EA, where it's like, well, just sue us, right. And each line has been in the IDA has various, very structured, just kind of remediation steps that you go through and avenues for that. But, you know, in places like Chicago, in places like San Diego, places like New York, there have been some journalistic expos. A is looking at how, you know, the cost of litigation is so expensive that we could be taking that money and actually investing it into into students. No, I think. I think that though, this whole system needs to be revisited. But we do know that there has to be legal protections, because in the absence of legal protections, people do the status quo. And the status quo is going to inherently favor members of historically dominant groups, including those who do not have disabilities. Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm afraid we won't be solving that, you know, tomorrow, but
my recommendation tomorrow one would be if you were listening to this, and you get an email, ignore it. Take a moment to think what's at stake here and respond. And then also to question our priors, right to question our assumptions. And, fundamentally to put yourselves in the shoes of a family who has disabled child, right? People are just looking to do their best right principles, I will also say are doing the best they can have they can with what they have. I wish we could increase what principals have. So they can respond to more people. But I do think, shedding a light on the differential perception and treatment of individuals in our society across many lines, including disability and race is really important.
Don't miss the mystery question right after this break.
So our mystery question is, what's the biggest lie you once believed was true? Gosh, this, this is hard. What's the biggest lie you once believed are true, you can either you could go safe, or you could go controversial on this, it's totally up to you. So biggest lie once? What's the biggest lie you once believed was true? Um.
Gosh, that's a hard one. We can pick another question. Do you want me to go first thing
first. Okay. Part of this question for me is what the biggest lie, it's that if I ever believed it was true. I think that most of my research is motivated by this idea that the way we define and evaluate merit is not just about individual ability, effort or preference, right? It's about all these social structural things in terms of opportunity, and who has the opportunity to develop certain things that we take as measures or indicators of skill, ability, etc. And whether or not we think we're influenced by social structure or situational factors we are and just trying to think that like, I think that's the biggest lie we have in the United States that like, we can evaluate individual merit apart from where someone is seated in social structure. So I wouldn't say that is 100%. The biggest lie. I'm just trying to think about everybody into it. I mean, I grew up in a really bizarre family. Emily, I was raised by a single parent, my three kids, but my dad was incarcerated. And so my mom raised me. And she was the, you know, she was an immigrant to the US, she was stateless. Like we grew up, I grew up half in like a rural part of the Pacific Northwest, half a big city in LA, like, I knew personally that I needed to education was my ticket out. And she always told me education is your ticket out, right? And I believe wholeheartedly that if I worked hard enough, and I just did my off, I would done good education, and I'd be fine. And in some respects, for me, that worked out right, I did work hard. And I had the support of my teachers, and things like this. But, you know, there were a lot of invisible advantages. I didn't perceive I had, like, my mom worked in an elite private school. And so I went there for free, right, that was a big tail with I had an accident as well. But I guess in some respects, I must have bought into this thing that if you work hard enough, it'll be all okay. Right. And then, I don't know, I got I went to undergraduate at Yale and like, there was kind of a moment there where I realized social structure plays is a lot. So again, I think that is the biggest lie in this whole meritocracy, I will I'm going on a tangent. Meritocracy was not a serious word. It was popularized by Michael Young, who wrote a satire called the myth of meritocracy. That is supposed to be a joke because of what if we distributed spots in England on the basis of IQ scores, and by the end of death, the rich just gave the system right. And that's pretty much the system we're at right now. Now, this is my long winded answer. But I would say the myth of meritocracy is the biggest lie. I just not quite sure if I ever believed believed it. I think I went with the motions for a while. But as a sociologist, I can tell you,
Oh, that was great. That was great. Thank you for that. That wealth, wealth of information. So I am deciding where which way I want to go with this, I think that I'll go more personal. So I grew up in a very religious home and believed very, was more on the conservative end of not only politics, but also just religious belief. And one of the lies that I definitely believed was about LGBTQ plus people. And I was taught and a very young age that anyone who was you know, gay or lesbian, were deviant. And completely just, you couldn't trust them. You know, they, you know, a child. You know, I was told by adults that you didn't want to meet anyone like this because they could hurt you potentially. And know even make you a certain way. And all this stuff. And so I definitely was very impressionable. And did you hear that?
Yeah.
You heard my you heard my ring. Yeah. Sorry. Ring. It's like a whole trumpet. It's the I forgot that. I mean, I need to turn Bluetooth off on my phone. That is the Hogwarts March. Heard? Yeah, no, I know. So anyways, and the reason I say that is because when I got into my teenage and adult years, I was a i. My first job was at a photography studio in like a mall. Do they even have those anymore? Like, where you go and take pictures, and they like, print out pictures at the mall? I have no idea. But like, back in the 90s. That's
going into a mall? I haven't been into a mall.
Exactly. Yeah. So my boss at the time, he was a he's a gay man. And I was so scared. Right? Because, you know, I was told that, you know, quote, unquote, these people would, you know, do quote unquote, these things. And he's just a normal dude. You know, just the guy and wonderful boss. So kind. And his, his, this was in California. And at the time, you know, marriage equality wasn't even a thing. You know, but they got married. And they said that their husband, you know, they were husbands, even though legally they didn't have that status. And so anyways, to make a long story very short. I have definitely evolved on that. But I, you know, it's just one of those things, it's like, you believe something about someone because of preconceived ideas that are completely false and based on based on nothing except, historically, we have said that these people are these things, you know, and that really has informed, you know, my view of, you know, racial background, disability, socio economic status, everything. So, that's probably one of the biggest lies that I no longer believe.
No, thank you for sharing. Can I follow up
on that for a moment? Slowly? Absolutely.
I think one of them, your story reminds me, what we know from psychology about how we can start to break down these barriers in the most substantiated way is through what we call intergroup. Contact, which is what you describe is actually having contact with people who are different from us, and in a very personalized way in which you have to work together with them. And we see that someone is actually a person rather than a member of an out group that we may have imagined ideas about. And, you know, to bring it back to disability, one of the reasons why it's important to have inclusion, right is one, we don't want to make predetermined judgments that because you have a disability, you are inherently less capable to master this curriculum, right. But the other is so that and I don't want to make it sound like children, like my daughter are just little tokens to
know that Yeah.
But too often individuals with disabilities, especially children are segregated and warehoused, apart from everyone else. And this affects the perceptions that our next generation is having, right? If you never actually meet someone with a disability, you actually see the other actually a person, right, that informs our viewpoints related. And we also see this in the private education world, in which there is discrimination on the basis of disability status, you know, how educators view children with any type of of support needs. But what's been really cool is that this summer, my daughter and my son are going to the same camp, and with an inclusion a and it's been really interesting to see how the typical kids are responding my daughter, she's so visibly different. And at first, they had lots of questions. How can she do this? How can she not do this? And it's been a week and now they're really interacting with her she's having the best time of her life. You know, they're they're doing activities together. And we can see even in this that like, when they approach another child at the camp, who is wheelchair, that openness is there that that when you were talking that this idea of those people, right, and we do that for our groups, and when we have a chance to get to know those people are, are not scary that they're human, fundamentally, we can start to change perceptions, not only of individuals, but also social categories.
Learn Rivera, thank you so much for spending some time on thinking cluesive We appreciate it. It's
my pleasure. Thank you.
That chime means you guessed it, free time. This week. Let's talk about podcasts. You love them. I love them. But sometimes it's hard finding good ones. Have you ever tried googling to find a podcast episode? It's, it's not easy. So I've got three tips for you. And they're totally for free. It will cost you absolutely nothing. Okay, close to nothing. At most, it's going to cost you your email. But here's the first one. Sign up for a podcast recommendation newsletter, like ear buds podcast collective ear buds was created by my friend and co host of another podcast I produced trailer park, the podcast trailer podcast, aerial Nissen, Blatt, earbuds, recommends five podcasts all related to a theme. So the most recent edition features, black perspectives, podcast recommendations for Black History Month, sign up right now or after you finish this episode to earbuds podcast collective, you will not regret it. The second one is to go to pod chaser.com and use their search feature to find podcast episodes that you will find interesting you can use any keywords you want. You can use particular names of guests that you want to check out. So for instance, if you put my name Tim VA gets into pod chaser. You can see all the times I've been a guest on other podcasts. It's quite a powerful tool. And finally, ask your friends, family or colleagues, what they're listening to, you never know what might be in their podcast feed. Usually, I am listening to about a dozen podcasts that at any point, and I don't always remember to tell people about them unless they asked me so this is your chance to ask somebody what they're listening to. And of course, I want you to share this podcast with people you know, you know, word of mouth is still a huge way people find out about podcasts. But even more importantly, I want more people to listen to podcasts in general. So if you can get one person that's never listened to a podcast, listen to one episode of something. That's a win, and I'll take my wins where I can get them
that's it for this episode of thinking cluesive You've been a wonderful listener, I am so grateful to create these episodes for you. Do you want to share the love with us? Find us on the socials and say Hi, we are pretty much everywhere at think underscore inclusive. Or you can just search for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Think inclusive is written edited sound design mixed and mastered by me, Tim Vegas, and is a production of MCIE Original Music by miles credit. Hi miles if you're listening additional music from melody that's m elod.ie If you're interested in checking them out. Thanks for your time and attention and remember inclusion always works
I have to apologize of course like a gardener is coming to our neighbor's house and there's a leaf blower so if at any point it gets loud let me know this is the best room in our house for Internet
problem it Yeah, most people these days are totally fine with you know, you know dogs barking and children crying and leaf blowers so I'm not too worried. So if you don't mind, let's just jump in. Let's do it. All right. MCIE
