When my son Channing was in kindergarten, gym was the best part of his school day.
He attended a school in Moline, Illinois. We did not have a diagnosis for him yet, and Head Start had gone well. Kindergarten brought more structure, more transitions, and more expectations. Things that had seemed manageable became much harder.
Channing loved being in the gym. When his class’s time there ended, he struggled to accept that it was truly time to leave. Transitions have always been difficult for him, and at school his distress began escalating into screaming and sometimes self-injuring behavior.
The school often pulled his older sister out of her fourth-grade classroom and asked her to calm him. A child was being made responsible for regulating her younger brother during a crisis the adults around him did not understand.
When even she could not calm him, the school called the police. Then they called home to reach a parent.
By the time we arrived, Channing was often being physically restrained by a police officer. The restraint increased his fear and escalated the meltdown further. At that point, all we could do was take him home for the rest of the day.
This was kindergarten.
We began working with a psychiatrist that year and addressing suspected ADHD and autism with her. We knew Channing needed help. Accessing a complete evaluation and formal diagnosis was another matter.
In our area, children on Medicaid commonly faced waitlists of one to three years for formal developmental and psychological evaluations. Very few local providers accepted Medicaid, and at times there was no accessible child psychologist available to us. We could not simply make an appointment and get answers. Years passed inside that gap. Channing did not receive his formal autism diagnosis until 2026.
The pattern followed him through three different schools. Police were called during his meltdowns, sometimes almost weekly. Adults treated his distress as dangerous behavior while we struggled to access the evaluation that could fully explain and document what was happening.
During some of those years, we were poor and experienced homelessness. We did not have the money to pay privately for specialists, travel wherever necessary for evaluations, or hire someone to force the schools to respond differently. Channing was disabled with no way to quickly obtain the proof the system demanded, and he paid the price for a shortage he had no control over.
At the beginning of second grade, Channing entered a therapeutic day school. Attending required a 50-minute bus ride each way—an hour and 40 minutes on a bus every school day—because the right support was not available nearby.
Despite that long ride, everything changed. He learned. He made friends. He enjoyed going to school. Working out in the gym became part of his school experience, giving him movement that was good for his body and helped him regulate. Once he was surrounded by adults who understood his needs, the child who had repeatedly been treated like a behavioral problem began to thrive.
When we moved back to the Quad Cities, the new district decided he no longer needed the therapeutic school. They placed him in a self-contained classroom. His teacher was kind and patient, and because of her, he managed. His crises decreased. His learning did too.
The school appeared to consider the placement successful because he was easier to contain. My standard was whether my child was actually being educated.
My daughter Rae’s experience showed me another way a school can recognize a disability and still fail the child living with it.
Rae had documentation of ADHD and sensory processing disorder beginning in kindergarten. Her psychiatrist recommended accommodations. I began asking for a 504 plan in first grade, but she did not receive one until seventh grade, after we moved into the much smaller Kewanee school district.
When we returned to the Quad Cities, her 504 accommodations were repeatedly ignored or violated. At one parent-teacher conference, I was told that Rae had 18 missing assignments.
Her plan addressed this exact struggle. Someone was supposed to check in with her daily to make sure she had written her assignments in her planner. The work was supposed to be available online or placed in her take-home folder. She was supposed to be reminded about missing assignments and helped to make a plan for completing them.
None of that was happening.
Those 18 missing assignments were presented as evidence that Rae was not doing her part. They were also evidence that the adults responsible for implementing her 504 plan were not doing theirs.
Teachers and the middle-school dean often told Rae, “When you get to high school, no one will help you, so get used to it now.”
That was untrue. A 504 plan does not disappear when a student reaches high school. Disabled students can also receive academic adjustments in college and reasonable accommodations in the workplace, although the process for requesting and documenting them changes.
The school used an imaginary future without support to justify withholding support in the present. It taught Rae that growing up meant expecting people to disregard her documented needs.
The school also knew she struggled significantly in math. Staff gave her a calculator and a cheat sheet instead of identifying why she was struggling and providing the instruction she needed. Those tools helped her complete assignments without teaching her the skills she was missing.
When I requested an IEP evaluation for math, I was told that evaluations were reserved for the bottom-performing 5% of students. The school claimed Rae did not qualify because, even after spending an entire semester not turning in assignments, she still performed better than the bottom 5%.
Rae had documented disabilities, failed to complete an entire semester’s work, and continued struggling in math, yet she was considered too capable to evaluate.
The bottom 5% was not the legal standard for deciding whether a disability should be evaluated. When the district refused my request, it gave me nothing in writing explaining the decision or informing me how to challenge it.
The message behind all of this was eventually said aloud. A dean told Rae directly, “You are normal enough. Act like it.”
Neither of my children lacked the ability to learn. They lacked consistent access to environments designed to help them learn.
Their experiences also exposed how heavily the system depends on parents knowing how to fight it. Parents should not need expertise in disability law to get their children educated. A child’s support should not depend on whether a parent understands every regulation, knows what language will force a response, or has the time, money, health, and confidence to challenge a school district.
Eventually, I pulled both children out of public school and started homeschooling.
I am grateful we had that option. Homeschooling protected my children from further harm, but it did nothing to repair the system that failed them.
Many families cannot homeschool. Some parents must work outside the home. Others are raising children alone, managing disabilities of their own, or living without the money, time, transportation, and support homeschooling requires. Their children are no less deserving of safety, dignity, and an appropriate education.
Schools need meaningful accountability. An accommodation plan that staff can ignore is not protection. A classroom where a child stops learning is not a successful placement. Police restraint is not a substitute for disability support. Families should not have to leave public school to give their children the chance to make meaningful progress.
When I pulled Channing out of public school at the end of fourth grade, he could not read.
Today, my seventh grader read an entire book aloud to me, fluently. He needed help with only a couple of scientific species names—the kind of words almost anyone might pause over.
The school had measured success by how easily he could be contained. Sitting beside him as he read that book, I heard what progress actually sounds like.
Sources and Further Reading
For readers who want to review the federal disability protections discussed in this essay:
- U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. “Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities.”
Explains that Section 504 and Title II protect students with disabilities in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. It also explains how requesting accommodations and providing documentation may work differently in college.
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship under the ADA.”
Explains the right of qualified applicants and employees with disabilities to reasonable workplace accommodations, unless providing them would create an undue hardship for the employer.
- U.S. Department of Education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “Sec. 300.8(c)(10): Specific Learning Disability.”
Defines a specific learning disability as one that may affect one or more academic areas, including mathematical calculations. A child does not have to struggle in every subject to potentially qualify.
- U.S. Department of Education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “Sec. 300.301: Initial Evaluations.”
Explains that either a parent or a public agency may request an initial evaluation to determine whether a child has a disability and needs special education services.
- U.S. Department of Education, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “Sec. 300.503: Prior Notice by the Public Agency; Content of Notice.”
Explains that a school must provide written notice when it refuses to initiate or change a child’s identification, evaluation, educational placement, or provision of a free appropriate public education. The notice must explain the school’s decision and the information it relied upon.
These sources provide general information about federal disability protections. State laws and individual circumstances may provide additional rights or requirements.
Accessed September 18, 2026.
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