Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During the Pandemic

• In Event: The Complexity of School Choice for Historically Marginalized Families

Abstract

Research on how families make decisions about schools and educational options frequently relies on “market-based, color-evasive logics” (Posey-Maddox et al., 2021, p. 39) that assume families “function as objective, rational choosers who maximize benefits for their children” (Cooper, 2005, p. 175). Yet this dominant framing ignores how families’ social positions may shape the choices available to students and the choices families make for their children. In response, recent scholarship has argued that educational decision-making is actually a more complex, socially- embedded process (Cooper, 2005; Debs et al., 2023; Freidus, 2019; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021; Roda & Wells, 2013). In particular, research focusing on Black families shows that positionality – and race in particular – is central to families’ decision-making, such that Black families’ choices require holistic, ongoing racialized risk assessments, and weighing trade-offs (Cooper, 2005; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021).

In this paper, we expand on the “positioned choice” (Cooper, 2005) literature by examining the positions from which families of disabled and multiply-marginalized children make choices. Disabled students and their families occupy a unique set of marginalized positions in schools due to ableism, the political and practical structure of special education, and the intersection of these systems with other social inequalities, including racism and classism. They tend to have more choice moments than families of non-disabled children due to the structure of special education planning, and these choices are shaped by ableism, systemic constraints, and a wide range of past and potential harms (Cowhy et al., 2023; Waitoller & Super, 2017).

We interviewed 30 racially and socioeconomically diverse families of disabled children about their schooling experiences and decisions prior to and during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time period marked by multiple, on-going “choice moments” (Posey-Maddox, et. al, 2021) by most families of school-age children in the United States. We find that families engaged in a process of “intersectional positioned choice” as they considered trade-offs between various risks and needs – physical safety, mental health, academic support and success, and childcare. Many considered school settings that, particularly for families of color, had been unsafe and academically insufficient even prior to the pandemic, and the risks and benefits of in-person versus remote schooling, or of exiting their schools entirely. For the families in our study, disability and ableism – intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality – increased the frequency of choice moments, the risks embedded in each educational option, and the complexity of decision-making. This intersectional marginalization constrained the choices available to families, forcing them to make trade-offs between school settings that caused different kinds of harm. Our findings extend beyond the pandemic to reveal how ableism and special education structures complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students.

Authors

• Rachel E. Fish, Smith College

• Erica O. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Alexandra J. Freidus, University of Connecticut