In August 2018, The Globe and Mail published a piece on the gap between what schools can offer students with disabilities and what they need to be successful. 1

The tagline reads: “Many Canadian parents feel the public- and private-school systems simply can’t support their kids with special needs and are seeking out more specialized programs to help their children.” The article describes the amounts parents spend to involve their children in programs, therapies, and extracurricular activities, and suggests that parents of children with disabilities are apt to spend two or three times as much as other families. These findings align with our recent Critical Transitions study exploring how families navigated the elementary to secondary school transition and the supports they used to ensure their children were successful.

When what children need isn’t being offered in school, what options do parents have? And, importantly, which parents have options? From our study, many parents are spending their own money to ensure their children have access to much needed accommodations in school. However, when approaching disability as an individual issue, are we unintentionally creating the conditions for greater privatization in education?

The costs of disability

As noted in The Globe, access to education can be expensive, particularly for students with disabilities. Although some forms of equipment, technology, and/or services are offered through the public education system, there appears to be growing reliance on private services and supports to address student needs. For instance, securing devices, equipment, assessments, and technology can be costly. Even when families have insurance or can access government grants or funds, they typically do not cover 100 percent of the cost, leaving families with additional personal expenses. School boards can offer psychological assessments, but wait times are long.2 There are dedicated funds for specialized equipment allocations so boards can purchase equipment for students.3

However, accessing technology through the public education system can take considerable time and administrative effort. Even when technology is made available through schools, staff and students may require training which can be difficult to organize. Access to 20 specialized therapies is also limited, often with recommendations implemented through the student’s teacher as opposed to the therapist.4

For many families, public solutions to individual student supports are inadequate, costing their children time, self-confidence and access to academic opportunities.

Securing resources and support for students with disabilities in the Ontario context

Students with disabilities in Ontario won the right to access public education with the passing of Bill 82 (1980), and school boards were legally obligated to provide special education services and supports.5

To align students with support, school boards across the province brought in the Identification, Placement and Review Committee (IPRC) process through which students would be identified with an exceptionality, placed in a supported setting according to their perceived need, and be guaranteed an Individual Education Plan (IEP). The IEP includes important program recommendations, such as accommodations.

In 2004, the province determined that IEPs could be developed in the absence of review through IPRC, speeding up students’ access to programming and support.6

As a result, most students participating in special education in Ontario have not gone through IPRC but are supported with an IEP.7

The system’s commitment to the IPRC and IEP shows that the province recognizes the urgent need to ensure students are supported and accommodated in school. However, many families and advocates say the system is inadequate and point to ongoing barriers to support, lack of accommodations, experiences of exclusion and bullying as well as a pervasive lack of agency and/or autonomy.8

In the past, special education pooled resources into special education classes and schools, meaning if students needed access to additional support, they would require a specified placement. Since Bill 82, there have been monumental shifts towards greater inclusion in education where most students participating in special education are learning in mainstream classes.9

A primary approach to inclusion is the implementation of individual accommodations, a strategy that focuses on individual needs and, as a result, individual solutions. The accommodation strategy is protected under Ontario Human Rights Code with school boards being obligated to ensure students are accommodated to the point of “undue hardship”.10

But what happens when the implementation of accommodations is slow, inadequate, or stigmatizing? Or when wait times for assessments risk delaying support, access to speech or physical therapy is inadequate, and approaches to support produce conditions in which students feel othered and unsafe? The individual nature of accommodations means that families do not have to “change the system” to secure support. If they have the means, they need only secure solutions for their child through private options.

Critical transitions

In this article, we share some insights from our work in the Critical Transitions (CT) project into what families of students with disabilities do when their needs are unmet. The CT study set out to explore student pathways through school with a particular focus on the transition between middle and high school (Grade 8 to Grade 9). We wanted to better understand how students and their families navigated the education system, secured access to support, and learned about secondary school course selection and access to postsecondary education.

Some of our early findings show that there is a notable lack of governance around important aspects of student transitions, leaving educators, families and students without much direction. Also, we uncovered that families seeking additional support for their children often found little in the public education system. As such, many families were motivated to reach out to the private sector to access services and resources, with some driven to leave the public system for the private system altogether.

Inflexible systems that stigmatize disability

The experiences of one family interviewed for the CT study offers a snapshot of how inflexibility in the public system—failures of access for disabled students within it— push those parents with sufficient social and economic resources towards solutions offered in the private sector. The parent in this example family had two teenage daughters in secondary school, both of whom had been assigned IEPs for most of their school careers. Despite having accommodations outlined in an IEP, both Students A and B experienced being in classes with educators who did not or would not adapt their teaching methods. Student B told us, “I just gave up […] trying to explain, because [the teacher] didn’t really understand my IEP at all”.

Students with disabilities, like Students A and B, can find themselves othered and stigmatized when trying to unlock entitled supports.

Because her IEP authorized a separate room in which to write assessments, Student A was obliged to carry around a brightly-coloured permission slip. But this permission mechanism, devised by school administrators, outed the student’s disability to peers: “Nobody wanted to carry the paper in the school because you’d get made fun of if you carried the bright[ly coloured] paper”.

What’s more, when she needed to access a laptop that had been assigned to her, Student A would have to collect it from a specific Special Education room in the school, outing her to peers who may see her enter. Pointedly, this stigmatized space was also where students perceived to have “behavioural” challenges would be sent, reminding us that Special Education is at times treated as a literal and figurative “dumping ground” for anyone who disrupts the practices of an inflexible classroom.

Privatized solutions

The challenges faced by students with disabilities in the public system—such as those faced by Students A and B—create opportunities for the private sector. In part, we would argue, these challenges are consequences of how disability is taken up by schools as an issue of individual needs requiring individual solutions. When solutions are not made readily available through the public system, families whose children’s needs are not being met, and have the means to do so, can “choose” individualized, free-market solutions. However, acquiring solutions from the private sector removes the onus on public systems to adopt universal strategies of support that would ultimately serve a greater number of students.

The individual approach to disability and accommodation leaves families on their own to navigate a system fraught with barriers to access. The case-study family was often encouraged to seek private resources to subsidize where public schools were failing their children. Early in their schooling, educators suggested that Students A and B be assessed for learning disabilities. But educators told their parent, “I would consider going private if you have the coverage because you’re going to wait for a very long time”. While diagnostic testing, as noted above, can be provided in the public system, long waits can persuade parents with financial means to seek private assessments and jump the queue.

When Students A and B were frustrated by educators not following their IEPs in the classroom, the school advised their parent to go outside the public system and engage private tutors. Pushing back on this advice, the parent asked, “What have you done to support? I’m happy to pay for a tutor. However, I want […] to exhaust everything before I go and spend”. Having the economic resources to do so, the parent did eventually hire a private tutor, and when Student A was faced with the not-so-accessible special education-issued laptop (and the stigma surrounding it), the parent paid out of pocket to buy her a laptop of her own.

Being able to afford a tutor netted an extra dividend when the tutor informed the parent about an alternative program within the public system which offers fully online courses for a (small) fee per course. Once Student B enrolled in this online program, their IEP provisions for classroom accommodations became mostly redundant, only necessary for end-of-course assessments. As such, the disabling classroom conditions the student had experienced effectively disappeared. This online program is run by a charitable organization and is under the public system umbrella, but the program still represents a paid-for “choice” (fees, requirements of equipment, access to wi-fi, etc.) that not all have the means nor knowledge of to access.

Certainly, a range of “choices” become known only to those parents who also enjoy the benefits of social resources. These social resources are apparent in networks of friends and personal contacts who provide exclusive access to valuable information on how to unblock the system. The parent in our example family is also a school principal, and a friend in her personal and professional network worked as a teacher in her children’s school. One day, this friend told the parent, “You need to talk to the new VP: she’s all about Spec[ial] Ed[ucation]”. Acting on this exclusive information, the parent advocated to the new senior administrator for Student A’s unmet needs, and practices in the school—such as the brightly coloured permission slip—were reformed.

Towards equitable access for all

The inequities we describe here require not individual but collective effort to address. More affluent parents might contribute to these efforts by pooling their social and economic resources to advocate for systemic change related to access and inclusion in the classroom. However, because of the lack of attention paid to supporting students with disabilities across the system and the individualized nature of accommodations, families who have the resources to engage the private sector will do so, taking their capital and investment with them.

Market-oriented impulses towards competition and efficiency corrode potential for solidarity and collective action. So long as private options are available and individual families with means continue to draw on private stop-gaps to public education problems, there is little motivation for systems to change their approach to supporting students in timely and productive ways. As a result, the urgent need for our public schools to support all students equitably is diminished.

Notes

  1. Sharratt, A. (August 27, 2018). From autism to ADHD, parents are spending thousands on specialized programs to help their kids. The Globe and Mail Toronto.
  2. Ontario Human Rights Commission (2022). Right to read: Public inquiry into human rights issues affecting students with reading disabilities. Government of Ontario. https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/book/export/html/30871
  3.  Ontario Ministry of Education. (2024). Specialized Equipment Allocation (SEA) 2024-25 DIRECTIVES https://www.ontario.ca/files/2024-06/edu-sea-directives2024-25-en-2024-06-17.pdf
  4. Toronto District School Board. (2024). How to access your school’s SLP. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/About-Us/Professional-Support-Services/Speech-Language-Pathology-Services/How-to-Access-Your-Schools-SLP
  5. Elkin, W.F. (1982). Rethinking “Bill 82”: A critical examination of mandatory special education legislation in Ontario. Ottawa Law Review, Vol. 14:314-339.
  6. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014). The Individual Education Plan (IEP): A Resource Guide. https://oneca.com/wpcontent/uploads/2019/11/iep-resourceguide.pdf
  7. Toronto District School Board. (2024). An intersectional view of TDSB students with special education needs. https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/0/docs/SpecialEducationFactSheet2-AnIntersectionalViewofTDSBStudentswithSpecialEducationNeeds.docx
  8. Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth. (2016). We
    have something to say. https://ocaarchives.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/we-have-something-to-say-report-en.pdf
  9. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2017). Special Education in Ontario
    Kindergarten to Grade 12. https://files.ontario.ca/edu-special-education-policy-resource-guide-en-2022-05-30.pdf
  10. ARCH Disability Law. (2022). Guide—Human Rights and Education in
    Ontario: A general guide for students. https://archdisabilitylaw.ca/resource/guide-human-rights-and-education-in-ontario-a-general-guide-for-students/#:~:text=Schools%20must%20give%20you%20the,hardship%20is%20a%20legal%20term.