Delaware Study of Resegregation Patterns [Educational Redlining] for Behavioral Disabilities: The Urgency for Anti-Racist Special Education Practices and Policies

We employ QuantCrit to tell a Critical Race Counterstory of Resegregation that advances anti-racist policy and practices for emotional disturbance referrals in special education. Using descriptive statistics, CritSEM, and Critical Race Spatial Analysis, we analyzed Delaware longitudinal (2016–2022) and cross-sectional data to examine evidence of “zones of resegregation” for Students of Color labeled with a behavioral disability, including the extent to which these students spend outside the general education classroom and how the structural inequality of resources impacts resegregation patterns. We relied on the expertise of two Delaware Educational Leaders of Color to construct the Counterstory and ground-truth our statistical models and analyses. Resulting from the Counterstory are intervening policies and practices to initiate changes in special education that reflect anti-racist experiences in schools.