“You Have to Stay on Top of It”: Parents’ Experiences of Administrative Burdens in Special Education

In this qualitative interview study with a diverse group of 60 parents, I argue that parents perform administrative work to implement special education (SE). I leverage a conceptual framework that brings together administrative burdens theory with the concept of organizational fields to better understand how parents experience administrative costs to realize and enforce their child’s rights. I find that all parents experienced numerous compliance, learning, and psychological costs. Additionally, Parents of (Children of) Color experienced racialized burdens, which contributed additional direct costs and compounded other costs that Families of Color incurred. Finally, I found that the cross-field cutting nature of SE contributed an additional cost unaccounted for in the literature: linking costs. This paper concludes with implications that extend beyond SE.