Revealing Curricular Barriers That Harm Neurodivergent Students of Color

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge-even wisdom. Like art.” - Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

In perilous times, it is easy for educational leaders to become numb and feel powerless to institutional and societal barriers. However, the late prophetic author Toni Morrison, encourages educational leaders, and all of us, to resist giving into the feelings of powerlessness and being numb. Morrison knew, as a Black woman who lived during the Jim Crow era, that knowledge, effort, and hope were the ingredients to resist institutional and societal barriers against people in her community. Just as Morrison picked up her pens to scribe the resistance of Black people against White supremacy in her compositions, it is our time, as educational leaders, to build capacity to acknowledge and address curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color. Morrison charged us with learning from our failures and the chaos to create settings, narratives, and realities where marginalized students are nurtured, challenged, empowered, and successful.

Neurodivergent students of color face institutional and societal barriers based upon their disability status and racial identities. Take a moment to empathize with an 8-year-old Black Autistic boy who needs a high level of support with communication, emotional regulation, and academic development who sees and hears negative messages in his community, in literature, and in the media otherize and marginalize him for arriving to this planet with dark skin while being Autistic. If you can empathize with this student, you have not given into the malevolence. Educational organizations that do not affirm the neurodiversity, the spectrum of all the various types of thinking and learning, and center students’ culturally relevant contexts, the lived experiences of how students exist, intentionally and unintentionally harm neurodivergent students of color in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Learning From Organizational Failures and Chaos

When educational organizations have failed neurodivergent students of color, there are varying levels of chaos they create in the lives of their students. This chaos includes: underemployment, unemployment, generational cycles of economic poverty, mass incarceration, etc. Educational leaders who are aware of the chaos neurodivergent students of color are far too familiar with the effects these disruptions have on their students; however, they may not know the specific causes that lead neurodivergent students of color to lives full of chaos.

Educational leaders must identify the gaps within their organization that prevent their staff from increasing the academic outcomes of neurodivergent students of color. Elena Aguilar’s work on identifying gaps, using her Gaps Framework, is a great tool to begin this work. She encourages educational leaders to reflect upon the gaps their staff may have within their organizations. Those gaps include 1) a skill-based gap, 2) a knowledge-based gap, 3) a capacity-based gap, 4) a will-based gap, 5) a cultural-competence-based gap, and 6) an emotional-intelligence-based gap. (Aguilar, 2020). Educational organizations, that are not neuro-relevant, the state of honoring the various ways people think and exist, fail to assess the gaps among their staff related to the academic and social success of neurodivergent students of color. To be honest, educational leaders struggle with assessing their own gaps. This failure of self-awareness, at the leadership level, reinforces a culture of ‘this is how we have always done this’ in a time when the 2024 National Report Card revealed that only 10% of 4th grade neurodivergent students were proficient in English language arts and 16% proficient in mathematics. If you are an educational leader reading this article, I encourage you to identify which gap(s) are preventing you from addressing the curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color within your educational organization. I want to affirm that this work is not easy; however, it is necessary if you want to create a culture that affirms the neurodiversity and cultural diversity of your students. My theory of change is if educational leaders can honestly identify their own gaps in their ways of being, beliefs, and behaviors they will support their staff by identifying their gaps within their ways of being, beliefs, and behaviors in order to identify curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color with the goal of increasing academic outcomes for this diverse community of students.

Curricular Barriers

I define curricular barriers as major disruptions to the authentic and successful learning of students that intentionally or unintentionally cause multi-layered harms (e.g. cognitive, emotional, physical, etc.) that have lasting impacts in the lives of students. In this article, I will identify the curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

• The Absence of Learner Variability

1. Curriculum: curriculum materials do not have any notes or resources for educators to support neurodivergent students of color. (Knowledge gap)
2. Instruction: misaligned and ineffective instruction and services for neurodivergent students of color. (Skill gap)
3. Assessment: assessments that are one-size fits all in purpose, assessment type, and item type. (Cultural competence gap)

• Mindsets and Culture

1. Curriculum: curriculum materials reinforce ableism and racism and lack the diverse perspectives and experiences of neurodivergent students of color. (Cultural competence gap)
2. Instruction: instruction centers low expectations and/or unreasonable expectations for neurodivergent students of color. (Capacity gap)
3. Assessment: assessment data confirms ableist and racist mindsets and are not used to support neurodivergent students of color. (Cultural competence gap)

• Lack of Collaboration

1. Curriculum: curriculum materials are selected by the leader without the presence and input of a committee of multiple stakeholders. (Capacity gap)
2. Instruction: leaders dictate what instruction should look and sound like without welcoming and interpreting feedback from multiple stakeholders. (Emotional intelligence gap)
3. Assessment: leaders do not share student data with multiple stakeholders to receive feedback about possible solutions to address curricular barriers. (Will gap)

Each of these curricular barriers cause harm to neurodivergent students of color due to the various gaps within the leadership team and staff within educational organizations. The kind of chaos this causes includes hypervigilance, low levels of motivation, delays in executive functioning development, and academic regression or stagnation. Morrison did not solely charge us with identifying the malevolence of these curricular barriers; she encouraged us to learn from these failures in order to tap into our creativity to address them.

Addressing Curricular Barriers

The work of addressing curricular barriers may reveal that the gaps within leadership teams and staff, within educational organizations, may have become the culture of the organization. When gaps become organizational culture, that culture creates and maintains institutional barriers that intentionally or unintentionally harm neurodivergent students of color. Elena Aguilar's work on transformational coaching suggests that the ways of being influences the beliefs of a person and the beliefs of a person can influence a person’s behaviors (Aguilar, 2020). In her book Coaching for Equity: Conversations That Change Practice, she identifies the phases of transformation coaching as surfacing current realities, recognizing impact, exploring emotions, and creating new practices. I argue that these phases of transformational coaching should be evident in the decision-making process for educational leaders when addressing curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color.

As a 15-year career special education teacher, instructional coach, educational consultant, and thought partner, I learned the importance of creating timelines to affect change within educational organizations. Therefore, I created a 30-60-90-120-day plan to support educational leaders through the four phases of Aguilar’s transformational coaching model to address curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color.

• Within 30 Days (Surfacing current realities)

1. Curriculum: conduct a curriculum audit of your current curriculum solutions/materials with a focus on neuro-relevance.
2. Instruction: conduct a learning walk to different learning environments with clear observable measures of neuro-relevant instruction for neurodivergent students of color.
3. Assessment: disaggregate academic data sources with a focus on the intersections of race and disability/neurodiversity.

• Within 60 Days (Recognizing impact)

1. Curriculum: review curriculum audit results to determine the strengths and challenges with your educational organization’s current curriculum solutions/materials.
2. Instruction: review the notes from the learning walk to identify common strengths and areas of improvement among the instructional staff.
3. Assessment: clearly identify the learning plans each neurodivergent student of color has within each learning environment (e.g. IEP, 504, ELL/ML, GT, and MTSS).

• Within 90 Days (Exploring emotions)

1. Curriculum: conduct focus groups with different stakeholder groups (e.g. students, staff, caregivers, leaders, etc.) about whether the current curriculum solutions affirm students’ neurodiversity and cultural backgrounds.
2. Instruction: conduct one-on-one interviews and/or collect survey data from different staff members to ask them about their comfort and confidence with implementing neuro-affirming and culturally relevant practices within their learning environments.
3. Assessment: create opportunities for staff to name their emotions when reviewing student data and their own observational data from learning walks with the purpose of cultivating a space of empathy and connection.

• Within 120 Days (Creating new practices)

1. Curriculum: identify the changes your educational organization needs to make for your curriculum solutions (e.g. select new curriculum solutions, identify providers for implementation support, or develop supplemental curriculum solutions).
2. Instruction: co-create and implement a cycle of professional learning (i.e. workshops, collaborative planning, and coaching) focused on neuro-affirming and culturally relevant practices.
3. Assessment: use an evidence-based framework to analyze student data with different stakeholders with a focus on measuring equitable outcomes for neurodivergent students of color.

This Work Is Designed to Build Community

As you can see, addressing curricular barriers takes time. You are not going to resolve years of chaos and failures overnight. Although I created a 120-day abbreviated plan for you, your plan might look different for your educational organization. The plan I created takes 4 months to complete, which takes up more than one quarter of the year. This means that you must invest time, energy, and resources to support your staff with taking on this work. This work can feel isolating, defeating, and flat out challenging. The pathway towards neuro-relevance must be communal because the voices of your different stakeholders matter and will help your educational organization achieve its goals. This means that you do not need to do this work alone. This is not the time to fall into the curse of the savior complex. Your students and staff do not need a savior, they need a collaborator who will listen and respond to their realities in order to shift ways of being, beliefs, and behaviors within your educational organization. Through intentional collaboration, you can, like Morrison charged us with, gain the wisdom and clarity to co-create solutions that increase the academic outcomes of neurodivergent students of color while honoring the various ways they think and exist.

As the Founder and CEO of Realized Curriculum Solutions, I specialize in partnering with educational organizations to create culturally relevant and neuro-affirming curriculum solutions that elevate the academic success of neurodivergent students of color. I serve as your thought partner to begin the work of leading your educational organization towards neuro-relevance. If you need support with addressing the curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color within your educational organization, please contact me at info@realizedsolutionsllc.com. Visit our website to learn more about our impact, www.realizedsolutionsllc.com.

If you want to learn more about revealing curricular barriers that harm neurodivergent students of color, watch our webinar on this topic at https://realizedsolutionsllc.com/revealing-curricular-barriers.