This thesis examines federal education policy and rhetoric from the 1980s until the present day through a disability studies lens in order to interrogate how the American public school system both creates and reproduces disability. In chapter one, I introduce several models for studying and understanding disability, including Alison Kafer's political/relational model, which I argue is the most effective model for analyzing the role of disability in general education spaces. In chapter two, I outline the specific education policies of the Reagan, Bush, and Obama administrations and read them through the lens of disability in order to demonstrate how the era of high-stakes standardized testing and its accompanying policies and purposes of education have created disability in and through the public school system. In chapter three, I use President Joe Biden's rhetoric about education, his administration's policy decisions, and discourse about schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to show how relying on schools to be the \"great equalizer\" while simultaneously promoting a normative and competitive framework of education reproduces societal inequities and thus disability. Ultimately, I argue that in order to better understand the role of disability within American public schooling and to create a truly equitable education system, we must reconceptualize disability as a sociopolitical identity category rather than an individualized and medicalized condition, and we must read disability into general education spaces.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 23864