Suspensions, disabilities, and Australian ed policy

What does Greg Ashman help explain about the intersection of these topics?

Previously on Special Education Today, I have referred to Greg Ashman’s posts about sundry matters (constructivism, teacher education, and many other topics) from his ‘Stack, Filling the Pail. One of the reasons I subscribe to Mr. Ashman’s posts is that he routinely pops the BS-centric bubbles of some views about educational policy, and a current post on FtP provided an additional example of him doing so. In “Misinformation from the ABC: Do school suspensions put students on a trajectory to the justice system?,” Mr. Ashman discussed popular press (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) coverage of suspension of students with disabilities. Here’s his lede:

Yesterday, the ABC published a piece by reporters Alison Bradley and Nas Campanella about school suspensions. It was the typical romanticism we have come to expect. Despite an assertion in the article by Matilda Alexander, CEO of Queensland Advocacy for Inclusion (QAI), that students with disabilities are being suspended from school for ‘really silly reasons,’ the reporters tell the story of a boy suspended for violence towards two teacher aides. Perhaps they could not find a kid suspended for really silly reasons. Perhaps such kids are hard to find.

Mr. Ashman examined the connections between disability and suspensions and the consequences of suspension. Some of those connections may sound familiar to readers who have heard the rhetoric used in characterizing special education as a “school-to-prison pipeline.” Mr. Ashman rightly questions slippery reasoning connecting correlations between disability and suspension and suspension and undesirable outcomes; he shows that arguments based on them—including a call for greater inclusion of kids with disabilities in general education settings—are bogus.

I recommend “Misinformation from the ABC: Do school suspensions put students on a trajectory to the justice system?” to readers of SET and to others interested in disabilities, special education, education policy, public policy, and similar topics. Mr. Ashman,¹ teaches adolescents day in and day out and rarely (if ever?) argues from authority. Instead, he predicates his arguments on evidence and reason. Readers of SET should follow his posts at Filling the Pail.

AI-generated image based on prompt, “boys with disabilities in school yard looking at prison in distance.”

Footnote

1. Greg Ashman earned a Ph.D., so some folks would use “Dr.” instead of “Mr.” I have used the latter here not to denigrate his achievements but because, as some readers know, I find honorific forms of address repugnant, and because Mr. Ashman doesn't seem to have adopted the appellation himself.