Wizards and witches: parent advocates and contention in special education in the USA

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with parents of children with significant disabilities, as well as administrators and special education consultants, between the early 1990s and 2008 in a mid‐Atlantic US state, this paper examines the work of parental advocates as they translate special education policies to negotiate concessions for parents, bring issues into public debate, or attempt to incite other parents to activism. Advocates, we suggest, act as bridging agents in generating networks, connecting parents with others, articulating their knowledge with other parents’ knowledge, and bringing additional communicative resources to encounters. The paper illuminates approaches to advocacy work and traces the tensions and shifts from adversarial/participatory constructions of advocacy work toward more professionalizing/meditational constructions as the articulations of local institutional arrangements and national disability law and politics evolve.

Keywords:

• disability studies in education
• advocacy
• educational policy
• parents

Notes

1. Federal statutes [29 U.S.C §705(20)] define ‘significant disability’ as

1. severe physical or mental impairment which seriously limits one or more functional capacities (such as mobility, communication, self‐care, self‐direction, interpersonal skills, work tolerance, or work skills) in terms of an employment outcome;

2. [requiring] multiple vocational rehabilitation services over an extended period of time; and

3. one or more physical or mental disabilities … [a long list follows] to cause comparable substantial functional limitation.

‘Significant disabilities’ contrast with what are sometimes called ‘invisible’ or ‘soft’ disabilities – for example, learning or behavioral disabilities – attached to children by specialists, often on the basis of disputed criteria.

2. The official chain of contained contention is strictly individuated and moves through a sequence of steps in which, since 1997, parents have had the right to request mediation at any point if they disagree with an IEP or placement decision. Parents involved in a ‘due process’ hearing are automatically accorded the right to exit the adversarial process by requesting mediation. (Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services 2000, 3, 16).

3. After the three‐minute rule was implemented, mention of special education policy issues virtually disappeared from the newspaper – and hence from public view.