School Choice Strategies at the Intersections of Disability, Race, Class, and Geography

Y

24

School Districts; Students with Disabilities; School Choice; Educational Policy; Disadvantaged; Disproportionate Representation; Social Bias; Equal Education; Parent Participation; Student Placement; Individualized Education Programs; Access to Education; Geographic Location; Race; Developmental Stages; Social Status; Parent Attitudes; Placement Tests

1068-2341

While parents of students with disabilities (SWD) select schools according to various factors, schools also choose students through different sorting mechanisms. Thus, parents of SWD may need to employ different strategies to enroll their child in their preferred school. We employed an intersectional approach for studying school choice, integrating ethnographic interviews and descriptive GIS to answer the following questions: (a) What strategies do parents of SWD utilize to secure placement in the school of their choice? and (b) How is the engagement with such strategies shaped by their social and geographical locations? We found that parents engaged in five strategies: Accepting an IEP Team's school recommendations, securing placement through a sibling, testing into selective enrollments, changing IEP provisions, and engaging in due process. Moreover, these strategies were afforded and constrained by their intersecting social positions (i.e., race, class, and disability), their geographical locations, and the developmental school stage of their child (i.e., transitioning to kindergarten or high school).

As Provided

2024

EJ1425465