Playing Together: A Call for Multiple Stakeholders to Reduce Exclusionary and Harsh Discipline for Young BICOC with Disabilities

Punitive disciplinary actions deny Black, Indigenous,2 Children of Color (BICOC) with disabilities from access to meaningful instruction and increase their risks for truancy, dropping out, and incarceration. At the intersection of race, disability, and discipline, this paper is a call to action for research and practices that bring together stakeholders and co-constructed, local solutions to exclusionary disciplinary practices affecting BICOC with disabilities. Specifically, we assert that efforts to reduce disproportionately racist responses to the challenging behaviors of young BICOC with disabilities (birth through age 8) cannot be solved with a single intervention strategy or simplistic approaches. Instead, we highlight the critical shortage of research that centers the knowledge and experiences of BIPOC communities, families and early childhood populations. We provide implications for practices that specifically highlight anti-racist and anti-ableist framings in schools.