In this article, we present a conceptual framework for addressing the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education. The cornerstone of our approach to addressing disproportionate representation is through the creation of culturally responsive educational systems. Our goal is to assist practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in coalescing around culturally responsive, evidence-based interventions and strategic improvements in practice and policy to improve students’ educational opportunities in general education and reduce inappropriate referrals to and placement in special education. We envision this work as cutting across three interrelated domains: policies, practices, and people. Policies include those guidelines enacted at federal, state, district, and school levels that influence funding, resource allocation, accountability, and other key aspects of schooling. We use the notion of practice in two ways, in the instrumental sense of daily practices that all cultural beings engage in to navigate and survive their worlds, and also in a technical sense to describe the procedures and strategies devised for the purpose of maximizing students’ learning outcomes. People include all those in the broad educational system: administrators, teacher educators, teachers, community members, families, and the children whose opportunities we wish to improve.

Critical Civic Inquiry (CCI) is a transformative student voice initiative that engages students in critical conversations about educational equity and inquirybased learning to increase student voice and promote civic action. A quasiexperimental study was conducted to assess if participation in CCI increased the psychological empowerment (as measured through ethnic identity and civic self-efficacy) of high school students. Students who participated in CCI pedagogy reported increases in ethnic identity and civic self-efficacy. These findings indicate the importance of supportive adult relationships, inquiry-based learning, and critical conversations about social and educational inequities in promoting the psychological empowerment of marginalized students.

Historically marginalized students continue to experience opportunity gaps in our schools and inequities in their communities. To change these contexts, we want students to develop the skills, mindsets, and ability to act against oppression. In order for that to occur, educators must have support and opportunities to learn and practice acting as agents of change against oppression in the educational system. This challenge is particularly salient given that a majority of teachers are White and middle class, and thus have different backgrounds from the youth they seek to support. This exploratory study examined whether and how educators who participated in a project called critical civic inquiry (CCI) experienced sociopolitical development. Data including video observations, written assignments, online discussion boards, and individual interviews. The paper focuses on the experiences of five White educators in urban middle schools who participated in a yearlong CCI course, which was designed to support them in implementing critical pedagogy, student voice, sociopolitical development, and participatory action research in their classrooms. In this paper, we discuss how enacting a critical pedagogy as a participant in CCI may have impacted the sociopolitical development of teachers.

This is a challenging moment for supporters of public education: the status quo is untenable but the options offered by ''reformers'' appear equally dangerous. In this context we need arguments for the democratic purposes of education that offer an alternative to existing inequities on one hand and technocratic or privatized solutions on the other. New formations of parents, teachers, and young people call for schools that raise young people who feel connected to their communities, can critically interpret their social and political worlds, and possess the academic skills and agency to empower their communities (Warren in Transforming public education: the need for an education justice movement. N Engl J Public Policy 26(1), Article 11. http:// scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol26/iss1/11, 2015). This special issue, which originated in a series of interdisciplinary seminars, proposes sociopolitical development (SPD) as a core feature of democratic education and human development. Making SPD central to education requires a compelling mix of theory, rigorous evidence, and practical strategy. In this article we provide a scholarly context for SPD in education and introduce the contents of the special issue.