Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 16(1), 2016, 4–16 Copyright 2016, Division for Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners of the Council for Exceptional Children Multiple Voices, 16(1), Spring 2016 4 Dangerous Assumptions and Unspoken Limitations: A Disability Studies in Education Response to Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, Mattison, Maczuga, Li, and Cook (2015) KATHLEEN M. COLLINS The Pennsylvania State University DAVID CONNOR City University of New York BETH FERRI Syracuse University DEBORAH GALLAGHER University of Northern Iowa JENNIFER F. SAMSON City University of New York ABSTRACT In this article, we critically review the work of Morgan et al. (2015) and offer Disability Studies in Education (DSE) as an alternative conceptualization to traditional research within special education. We first unpack many of Morgan et al.’s (2015) assumptions, which are grounded in deficit discourses about children, family structures, economic status, and home cultures. Next, we identify flaws in their research design and methodology. Finally, we elaborate on how, through naming and making visible the workings of ableism and racism, DSE offers a way to counter the deficit discourses and inaccurate abstractions of lived realities upon which Morgan et al.’s (2015) work rests. In this article, we critically review the work of Morgan et al. (2015) and offer Disability Studies in Education (DSE) as an alternative conceptual- ization to traditional research in special education. Although our critical review and response centers primarily on the research reported by Morgan et al. (2015) in Educational Researcher, we are also in- formed by Morgan’s discussion of this work in an accompanying video produced by the American Educational Research Association (Morgan, 2015), Morgan and Farkas’ strategically timed editorial in the New York Times (2015), and a subsequent interview they both did with Marc Lamont Hill for the Huffington Post (Hill, 2015). We offer this critique in the spirit of disrupting the discourse of deficiency that permeates not only the work of Morgan et al. (2015) but also much of education scholarship, policy, and reform, more generally. We begin by identifying the assump- tions that guide the authors’ inquiry and analysis and making visible the attendant dangers of leav- ing these assumptions unexamined, as the authors do. Next, we identify the flaws in the authors’ stated research design and methodology, illuminating