Special Education and Teaching Commons^™

Enrollment And Disenrollment In Voluntary Prekindergarten: A Study Of Educational Leaders’ Decision-Making, Angela Cherie Passero Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study focused on how school leaders’ understandings of (dis)ability were implicated in decision-making and affected student (dis)enrollment in Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten Program (VPK). More specifically it explored how leaders in private VPK programs invoked conceptions of normality, and subsequently abnormality, during decision-making processes for student (dis)enrollment. Combining a critical poststructuralist approach (critical disability studies, critical policy analysis), decision-making on (dis)enrollment was contextualized within the current policy ecology. This policy ecology was framed as an historical development of policies regarding preschool for children with and without disabilities in a marketplace shaped by the convergence of federal, state, and …