Abstract
Although much has been written about demographic disproportionality in the U.S. among children identified as eligible for services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), less has been written about how county detention officials, guards, and employees in schools and school districts ignore, utilize, and manipulate nuances of this federal civil rights legislation to exclude eligible children from protections. Using expansive theoretical frameworks and archiving processes between 2014 and 2022, this analysis exposes through a lens of “not this” how youth in the U.S. resist and refuse obstructions and manipulations that prevent them from accessing educational opportunities, protections in the IDEA, and earning a high school diploma. Witness marks as a research and analytic tool are borrowed from horology, with infusions of critical horology. The author examines witness marks created by incarcerated male youth and their refusals to accept systemic blockages and violations of educational civil rights law as they experience bindovers to the adult court system, jail, and prisons. In all of these witness marks, young people and allies must engage in extraordinary measures to ensure that what is supposed to happen or should happen in the interest of justice actually happens.
Presenters
Melissa SvigeljAssistant Professor, Justice Studies, James Madison University, Virginia, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Learner Diversity and Identities
KEYWORDS
Education, Policy, Incarcerated, Youth, Disability, Resistance, Refusals, Juvenile, Delinquency
