Special Ed' and Special Knowledge: Expertise, Gatekeeping, and the Persistence of Resource Inequality

The number of primary and secondary students with a diagnosed form of neurodiversity has grown dramatically. In many localities, the laws and services supporting neurodivergent students' right to a quality education have lagged, creating complicated legal and resource regimes. Through a comparative study of families with neurodivergent children in three states in the United States (Arizona, New York, and Oregon), this paper explores how they navigate complex, multi-scalar legal and resource environments driven by policy regimes that have lagged behind popular and medical understandings of neurodivergence. In other words, the article details how families with neurodivergent children navigate changing and hotly contested ideas about neurodiversity and disability rights, laws and policies that have been slow to adapt, and how to access continuities of care. The preliminary results of this study suggest that certain forms of legal and resource elasticity meant to improve bureaucratic responsiveness compound educational inequality based on sex, class, race, and immigration status. Furthermore, experts that families hope will open resource pathways can gatekeep resources due to information asymmetries, information and resource scarcity, and debates about their formal and substantive legal obligations to families. This study makes important contributions to studying the persistence of educational inequality, legal elasticity, and neurodiversity, highlighting the crucial role of policymakers, academics, and advocates in addressing these issues.