Why Special Education Students Should Have A Choice In Their Classes: A Parent’s Experience
I was picking crumbs of peanut butter granola off my sweatshirt halfway through my son Leo’s 5th grade IEP meeting last spring when the case manager pushed a printed schedule across the table. Modified reading, modified social studies, adaptive math, and the pre-grouped special ed art elective. It looked just like all his schedules from the previous four years, and I was ready to sign off, until Leo leaned forward in his plastic chair and tapped the paper.
“I don’t want this art,” he said. “I want the mural art that all the other 5th graders take. Mia from down the street is in that.”
The case manager smiled, the kind of gentle smile that means your kid is asking for something they can’t have. “Leo, that class has 28 kids, it’s loud, and there’s no full-time aide in there. You’d get overwhelmed, and it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids. The adaptive art class is smaller, it’s made for kids like you.”
Leo crossed his arms and slouched back, and didn’t say another word the whole meeting. On the drive home, he didn’t beg for a snack or turn on his favorite dinosaur podcast, like he always does after IEP meetings. I stopped for ice cream anyway, and he got vanilla with sprinkles, then just picked at it while we sat in the parking lot. “Why don’t they think I can do it?” he asked, and I didn’t have an answer. I’d been doing the same thing the school did for years: assuming they knew best, assuming Leo couldn’t handle what the general ed kids got to try. That was the first time I realized I was wrong.
I told the team I wanted a 9-week trial. If Leo couldn’t handle it, if it disrupted the class, we’d switch him out no questions, no hard feelings. They hesitated, but eventually agreed. Trials are low-stakes enough that most schools will say yes, even if they’re nervous about change.
The first day of the quarter, Leo came home with blue acrylic paint caked down the sleeve of his favorite gray hoodie, and talked the whole 10 minute drive about how he got to pick which section of the school mural he got to sketch. I waited for the first bad email. It came three weeks in, after a fire drill that left the whole school amped up. The art teacher wrote that Leo got overstimulated by the noise, pulled out his break card (we’d worked that out ahead of time) and walked to the main office to sit for five minutes with his fidget cube. He came back when he was calm, and finished his sketch. She didn’t write that he was a disruption. She wrote that he handled it on his own.
By the end of the 9 weeks, Leo’s dinosaur sketch was on the hallway mural, right by the front door. He stops to look at it every single morning when we walk into school.
What I’ve learned from this, from talking to a dozen other special ed parents who’ve had the same fight, is that choice is almost always treated like a privilege for general ed kids. It’s not that schools are intentionally excluding special ed kids. It’s easier to slot kids into pre-made groups, it’s less work to stick to the modified schedule that’s already built. But what no one talks about is how much special ed kids gain from getting to say what they want to try.
This isn’t about pushing kids into classes they can’t handle. It’s about letting them have the same chance to find what they’re good at, what they enjoy, that every other kid gets. For Leo, reading and writing are hard, and he still needs modified support for core classes. But drawing? He’s better at it than most kids I know. That art class gave him more confidence, more practice regulating his own emotions, than any IEP goal I’ve ever signed off on.
There are concrete small steps any parent can take if this feels familiar, if your kid is being shut out of classes they want to try. First, always ask for a short trial instead of a permanent yes or no. Schools are way more open to a 6 or 9 week trial than a permanent schedule change, because it doesn’t lock them into anything. Second, bring your kid to the IEP meeting when they’re old enough to talk, and practice what they want to say the night before. Leo was nervous to speak up at first, but having him in the room saying what he wanted mattered way more than me saying it for him. Third, ask for small, specific accommodations instead of big overhauls. All Leo needed for art was a break card and permission to keep his fidget on the desk. That didn’t cost the district anything, didn’t require extra staff, it was just a tiny adjustment that made all the difference.
This year, Leo’s in 6th grade, and he wanted to try the general ed woodworking tech class. The team was still hesitant, talked about safety risks with power tools. We got another 9 week trial. The teacher taped a printed safety checklist to Leo’s work station, and he checks off each step before he touches any tool. He’s halfway through a birdhouse for our backyard, and brings it home every weekend to sand it.
It’s not all perfect. Last month, he got in a hurry, forgot to check his checklist, and almost put his hand too close to the sander. The teacher stopped him, and we talked about it at dinner that night. Leo said he should have asked for a reminder when he felt rushed. That’s not failure. That’s learning, the same way any other kid learns.
There are still fights we have to have every year. There’s still pushback when he asks to try something new that’s not in his pre-made schedule. But I don’t sign off on a schedule without asking Leo what he thinks anymore. It’s not that I’m demanding he get everything he wants. It’s just that he deserves the same say as every other kid in what he does at school. We’ll keep fighting for that, one trial at a time.
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