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Abstract
This article provides background information about special education and mediation and offers some points to consider for those interested in starting, improving or analyzing a special education mediation process. This article is based on the author's experience as a mediator as well as on site visits, interviews and a review of the relevant literature. The author concludes that mediation can be a very effective method for settling special education disputes and/or improving relationships but that the process can be affected by outside factors such as politics, finances and/or the system.
Notes
1. I would like to thank those involved in the special education process – parents, children, school administrators, those running regional or state mediation programs, mediators, advocates, attorneys and analysts – who took the time to share their ideas with me.
2. In one of these instances, a terrible car crash involving five students occurred during a mediation. The superintendent and assistant superintendent of the small rural school district were involved in the mediation and, because they needed to immediately deal with the emergency, the mediation required a second meeting the following week. The other case was continued because both sides felt it would be useful to continue the conversation after some additional information was obtained.
3. Parents, a public agency or the child – when he or she reaches the age of majority – can request mediation
4. This was the first mediation of any kind that I had handled in which the attorneys (including the one in training) outnumbered the other participants.
5. These included England, Scotland, South Africa, Russia, Malaysia, Sweden and Israel.
6. The International Standard Classification of Education, in 1997, replaced the term special education with special needs education. This change was made to distinguish the 1997 approach which focused on intervention in any place from the earlier definition which connected special education with a place – special institutions, schools or classrooms (Florian Citation2007).
7. England and Wales stopped using medical categories of disability in favor of a special education need (SEN) classification and Scotland also has a non-categorical approach. Other countries (e.g. Denmark, Poland, and the United States) consider two points: the extent to which a child has a low educational performance and ‘objective’ or medical disability (usually 4–10 categories). Some countries may include non-disabled children in the special needs category (e.g. refugees, disadvantaged) (Peters Citation2007, Rouse and McLaughlin Citation2007).
8. The authors additionally mention that special education in Australia, like other forms of education, is the responsibility of the individual jurisdictions and that each state and territory has its own Education Act.
9. Education is defined as a universal right by Article 26.
10. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA), a very important piece of civil rights legislation, indicates that all persons are entitled to be free of discrimination. Although people with disabilities are not specifically named in the Act, the principles that underlie the CRA also are the principles framing later legislation about the rights of individuals with disabilities and many of the early special education cases cited the Act (Applequist Citation2006).
11. According to Harry (Citation2007), research from many countries indicates that it is the historical status of a minority group within a society (rather than race) that accounts for low educational attainment.