Alfredo J. Artiles

Dr. Artiles is the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education. His scholarship examines the dual nature of disability as an object of protection and a tool of stratification. Professor Artiles studies how protections afforded by disability status can unwittingly stratify educational opportunities for racialized groups and is advancing responses to these inequities. For instance, he is studying the cultural-historical contexts of racial disparities in special education and discipline, and whether a disability diagnosis is associated with differential consequences for minoritized groups (e.g., segregation, quality and type of services). He and his colleagues have led national and regional technical assistance initiatives at the state and school district levels to address these equity paradoxes. Current research projects include:

* Examining the role of socio-cultural influences (e.g., histories of racial inequities in communities and schools, ideologies about school achievement) in educators’ interpretations and responses to chronic school district citations for racial disparities in special education and discipline.
* Analyzing the multiple meanings of “disability” and “inclusive education” and equity consequences for disparate groups of students.
* Tracing ways in which disability-race intersections become visible or invisible across settings as identification policies and practices get implemented at the district and school levels.
* Piloting a participatory model with youth of color with/without disabilities grounded in the arts and humanities to (re)structure school discipline policies and practices.
* Documenting how teachers and other school professionals decide whether dual language learners' academic or behavioral difficulties are related to disabilities.
* Analyzing equity consequences of inclusive education implementation in Global South nations.
* Re-designing policies and practices that leverage Black family partnerships and interrupt precursors to racial disparities affecting Black learners in a district with chronic disproportionality.
* Oral history of Larry P v. Riles: An interdisciplinary analysis of disability-race intersections.

Dr. Artiles received an honorary doctorate from the University of Göteborgs (Sweden) and was Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). He served on the White House Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Dr. Artiles is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Education and Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the National Education Policy Center. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. Dr. Artiles was a resident fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was elected AERA Vice-President to lead its Social Context of Education Division. Dr. Artiles has received numerous awards for his scholarly work and mentoring activities, including an AERA Presidential Citation, AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Award for the most outstanding article published in an AERA journal, the AERA Review of Research Award, and Mentoring Awards from AERA’s Division on Social Contexts of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and Arizona State University. He was selected Distinguished Alumni from the University of Virginia School of Education. Professor Artiles has served on consensus study panels of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine focusing on English learners, the Future of Educational Research at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, and Opportunity Gaps for Young Children.