The disproportionate representation of poor, working class, and racial/ethnic minority students in special education is a wicked policy problem because its formulation involves choosing among alternative problem interpretations and associated consequences. Integrating the work of Patricia Hill Collins and Nancy Fraser, the authors propose intersectional needs politics as a two-part meta-frame for conceptualizing the disproportionality problem, which they use to show how an interplay of individual and structural forces has shaped the relationship between oppression and activism in the disability rights and civil rights movements, and to argue that framing disproportionality solely as a problem of special education practice ignores a key institutional function of special education in an unequal, stratifi ed, and racialized education system. They also use the meta-frame to show how provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act perpetuate the disproportionality problem and on this basis offer recommendations that they believe are essential for its just resolution.

In this article, I propose a model to re-frame disproportionality research, which addresses key limitations in this literature. I present a brief overview of the problem and situate it in the historical context in which race and ability became intertwined. I then argue that a cultural-historical understanding of disproportionality requires sustained analytic attention to the historical link between race and ability, the role geographies of opportunity play in racial inequalities in special education, and the management of ecologies of difference in educational contexts.

Despite ongoing concern about the underachievement of low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, there has been little focus on the kinds of pedagogy required to reverse this underachievement. Pedagogical approaches have been increasingly transmission-oriented, focusing on preparing students for high-stakes testing. Such approaches ignore the socioeconomic and sociopolitical roots of underachievement as well as research highlighting literacy engagement as a strong predictor of literacy achievement. The Transformative Multiliteracies Pedagogy frameworks presented here locate CLD students' underachievement within societal power relations and highlight the negotiation of identity between teachers and students as a central means of creating contexts of empowerment. Heuristic tools educators can use to critically assess their own practice and to articulate potentially productive pedagogical directions are discussed.

In this paper we argue that special educators have a critical role to play in supporting children from diverse communities at times of vulnerability, which are created by the distance between the demands of the school context and the child's cultural context, and that increase the likelihood for school failure and for referral for or placement in special education. We identify four aspects of teacher education for special education that have the potential to strengthen the education of children who traditionally have been marginalized: (a) a much stronger understanding of the sociocultural context of children's learning and development; (b) preparation as members of intercultural mediation teams to support students at such vulnerable moments; (c) opportunities for mediated experiences in diverse sociocultural contexts; and (d) preparation of special educators to work in culturally and linguistically responsive ways with children who are eventually placed in special education and, for the most part, with the aim of moving them towards access to and full participation within the general education curriculum as soon as possible.