Enhancing Diversity: Educators with Disabilities

Vickie’s Story

Introduction • 9 tion of students with disabilities can be changed, efforts to improve the educational services they receive will face a persistent barrier. Here, educators with disabilities in our schools can provide valuable role models for students with disabilities (Gilmore, Merchant, and Moore 1980), role models both for careers in educational professions and for lives fully integrated into society. Their presence can influence the perceptions and attitudes of both fellow staff members and students as their colleagues and students develop realistic appraisals of not only which limitations do or do not emerge from certain disabilities but also whether these limitations really matter (Johnson and Johnson 1984). More educators with disabilities in our schools would also provide a better interpretation of the inclusion of students with disabilities being promoted. Third, we have done relatively little to address and remove the barriers we have erected for educators with disabilities compared to our efforts to improve the situations of educators from other underrepresented groups. For example, there are few references to disabilities in major reports of the reform of teacher training and the teaching profession (see, for example, Carnegie Forum 1986; Holmes Group 1986). Several years ago, one of us received a set of recruitment brochures produced by the National Education Association to encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to consider teaching as a profession. These brochures were designed for African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans, but none for Americans with disabilities. Fourth, the employment problems that individuals with disabilities face are especially serious from a number of perspectives. For example, the National Longitudinal Transition Survey reported that only 46 percent of special education students find employment after high school, with differences among disabilities ranging from 6 percent for students with multiple handicaps to 57 percent for students with learning disabilities (Governor's Planning Council 1992). While the survey also found that almost 70 percent of the students, especially students who are deaf or hard of hearing and pupils with learning disabilities, were as productive as their nondisabled counterparts in the first two years after high school (Behrmann 1992; Governor's Planning Council 1992), other reports suggest such positive outcomes may erode by adulthood. A Louis Harris and Associates poll (1986; cited in Governor's Planning Council 1987) found that two-thirds of all adult Americans with disabilities are not working and two-thirds of those not working would like to be employed. Gerber (1990) quotes a report from the President's Committee on the Employment of People with Disabilities that says that "43 million Americans with disabilities remain the nation's most isolated, unemployed, impoverished, and welfare-dependent minority which is losing ground" (5). The place of individuals with disabilities in professional-level occupations heightens the already alarming quantitative nature of the employment problems by adding a disturbing qualitative dimension. Professional-level employment provides benefits beyond those associated with work in general. Status, influence, and importance within society, as well as personal rewards such as self-esteem and greater income, accompany employment in the professions. These benefits, and the power and responsibility of the positions themselves, allow holders of such occupations to exercise significant levels of independence and self-determination. Yet research indicates that access to such benefits and opportunities has been limited for individuals with disabilities (de Balcazar, Bradford, and Fawcett 1988; Gottfredson, Finucci, and Childs 1984; Johnson and Hafer 1985; Kiernan and Ciborowski 1986; Moores 1969; Pfouts and Nixon 1982; Smith 1988; Zetlin and Hosseini 1989). 10 • Clayton E. Kelur, Rona/;} J. AmJerdon, and Joan M. Karp The consequences of such a situation are serious for both people with disabilities and society. Limited professional opportunities underemploy the abilities of individuals with disabilities to their and society's detriment. Lower placement rates in professions deny an appropriate share of responsibility and influence to people with disabilities. Those professions are denied the unique perspectives of those individuals . The situation stifles the aspirations of people with disabilities, affecting their opportunities to exercise self-determination more easily and, because of the financial implications, meaningful independence. The missing presence of sufficient numbers of individuals with disabilities in professions will always signal that society has not achieved full integration for this group of people. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed in 1990, provides an important tool not only to address these employment difficulties in general but also to enhance the diversity of the teaching profession by mandating employment practices that will provide equal opportunities for individuals with disabilities. School districts must face the...