Negotiating rights in education: an examination of U.S. education disability policy

In this chapter I unpack how the individualized rights framework of school-based disability policy in the United States is both rehabilitative and civil rights-oriented. Using one ethnographic moment, I illustrate how a compliance paradigm engulfs special education in the United States that constrains how educators respond to students when providing educational services. I also show how tensions between rehabilitative and civil rights orientations generate ethical and moral dilemmas for educators that further marginalize the very students that disability law was designed to protect. In doing so, I shed light on how the welfare state deems students with disabilities as deserving of educational supports and services, yet the right to receive these services is predicated on the need to rehabilitate and fix those who do not fit into existing societal structures. I conclude with a discussion about the implications of these orientations on broader patterns of educational inequity.