| Parental involvement in education is typically described as a natural and necessary aspect of parenting. In practice, this universalistic ideal is in tension with the reality that privileged parents are far more likely to be "involved." Nowhere is this tension more evident than in special education, where wealthy, educated, white parents are more likely to be actively involved in decision-making, while parental involvement is depicted as part of a fair and scientifically objective process for identifying children's disabilities and related needs. I argue that specific discourses and practices simultaneously perpetuate and obscure the role that parents' different resources and identities play in that identification and the ways in which privileged parents are consequently able to take advantage of particular disability diagnoses and accommodations for their children.;Multiple analyses using mixed methods support this argument here. Analysis of legislative proceedings and court cases shows educational rights for disabled children were created with social concerns in mind, but were interpreted in light of privileged parents' individualized and technical concerns. The influence of privileged parents' advocacy may also be seen in initially higher rates of learning disability (LD) diagnosis among white students, which I show depended on the early concentration of LD in predominantly white school districts. I validate this interpretation with findings from a survey showing that privileged parents have attitudes and practices that may make them more involved in special education decisions. I locate broader social support for these attitudes and practices in (1) parenting literature, which encourages parents to identify their children's disabilities and needs, but in a way that presupposes an audience of privileged parents; and (2) administrative hearings, where parents' claims are aided by money and knowledge of disabilities and expected modes of persuasion.;This research (1) draws on Bourdieu's conception of schools as simultaneously rewarding class-specific dispositions and obscuring their effects and (2) confirms Lareau's finding that parents' dispositions, in addition to students' dispositions, are important. It also makes the original claim that where parents' claims are couched in the language of science, parental intervention is especially likely to obscure the effects of class and racial privilege. |
