2025/06/26 by Rachel Fish, Alexandra Freidus, Erica O. Turner · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Family and Disability Support Research #Youth Substance Use and School Attendance #Parental Involvement in Education
paper · doi:10.1177/23328584251349156
In this paper we show how positionality shapes caregivers’ decisions about children’s schooling by expanding on research on Black families’ educational decision making to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply marginalized children made educational choices. The families of disabled children in our sample made holistic ongoing risk assessments and weighed tradeoffs based on their positions during a period of time marked by multiple ongoing choice moments: the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that disability and ableism—intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality—increased the frequency, ongoing nature, and complexity of choice moments as well as the risks embedded in each educational option. This intersectional marginalization constrained the options available to families, forcing them to choose between school settings that caused different kinds of harm. Our findings extend beyond the pandemic by revealing how ableism and special education structures complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students.