Dr Starr E. Keyes, Associate Professor within the school of counseling and special education at BGSU, discusses her research undergone in the Fall of 2019 as an ICS Faculty Fellow. Her project, entitled “Disability, Race, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” builds on her background studying the education system regarding learning abilities and special education, as well as research related to urban school systems and behavioral interventions. 

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the study of culture and society. This is BG ideas.

Musical Intro Lyrics:

I'm going to show you them with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the big ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the study of culture and society and the school of media and communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Schaeffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today I'm joined by Dr Starrr E. Keyes an associate professor at Bowling Green in the school of counseling and special education this semester. She's an ICS faculty fellow. Dr Keyes has done research on a wide variety of subjects relating to the education system, related to learning abilities and special education as well as research related to urban school systems and behavioral interventions. Dr Keyes received her BA and PhD from the Ohio state University and her master's in education from the University of Toledo. Today we're discussing her new research project entitled Disability, Race, and the School to Prison Pipeline. Thanks for coming to join me today, Starr.

Starr Keyes:

Thanks for having me.

Jolie Sheffer:

Tell me how you came to study this topic. What was your path from your previous research into this particular project?

Starr Keyes:

Yeah, I think it's a combination of a lot of experience personally and professionally. That got me to this point right now. But before this I was actually looking at the effects of computer assisted reading instruction on students' fluency, their reading fluency. And that's really important, right? Because we know students from urban areas tend to come to school behind in skills. And so I really want it to help them with their reading skills. But I started thinking about the bigger issues at play.

Starr Keyes:

And what else is going on in the educational system and how we can better serve students. And what's going on in the media also plays a role. But it's also something that I've just been interested in for a while. And so really just looking at, what contributes to this phenomenon, this school to prison pipeline and what can we do about it? W what does the research look like? What does research say about it? And so that's really kind of what got me started on it, just finishing up the computer system, reading instruction, and then after tenure being able to go into something a little bit more, deep if you will.

Jolie Sheffer:

We've been hearing a lot about the role of racism and the treatment of students leading to disproportionate numbers of minority and poor students being pushed into the criminal justice system. What role does disability play in the school-to-prison pipeline?

Starr Keyes:

Right, so students who have disabilities are often disproportionately represented, right? So what we know is that race and disability are some of the biggest factors that make students end up in this system, the school-to-prison pipeline. And some of those students who have disabilities may or may not, or who had been categorized as having disabilities may or may not actually have them. So there's a larger issue of disproportionality of these students in special education in the first place saying they have a disability.

Jolie Sheffer:

So can yo