Show Notes
After tracing what’s broken in special education — and why — Anya Kamenetz closes the series by asking what’s actually working. She reconnects with Beth Gellman-Beer, the former federal civil rights attorney from episode one, now a year into life after the Department of Education. Beth gives her honest read on what’s happened to the Office for Civil Rights, and her hopes for what it could become. Anya also talks to Stephanie Cosey, a longtime special educator in Southern California, about a very different approach to the adversarial relationship between parents and schools — one built on coaching and collaboration instead of legal threats. And she meets Roberto Rivera, a father in San Francisco who turned his own fight for his son’s speech therapy into grassroots advocacy, and who’s now helping build a tool that translates dense IEP paperwork into plain language for other families.
More from Zero Reject: The Uncertain Future of Special Education
Ashley Jochim is an education researcher with a PhD, four kids, and two decades of experience studying what makes schools work. None of that prepared her for the day her daughter Evelyn was diagnosed with ADHD and a learning disability — or for how little Ashley actually knew about special education. That experience sent Ashley down a research rabbit hole: a first-of-its-kind, 50-state database tracking special education identification and outcomes over the past 50 years. What she found raises hard questions about who qualifies for services and who’s left out. And whether the growing number of kids identified for special education is actually making things better or just spreading already-thin resources even thinner. In this episode, Anya Kamenetz digs into Ashley’s research and her proposal for reimagining the system — one that looks less like gatekeeping and more like good teaching for everyone. But when Anya brings in another perspective, from a longtime disability rights attorney, something else comes into focus for Ashley: that for a lot of families, the fight isn’t over which services their kid gets. It’s over whether their kid gets to go to school at all.
Kelly, a kindergarten teacher, knew her son McKay struggled with reading even before he started school. It took years and repeated pushback from the school before he was tested and diagnosed with dyslexia. Even then, the district resisted formally including it in his education plan. By seventh grade, McKay was faking being sick just to avoid school. This episode follows the family through years of reading interventions that weren’t working, and their decision to enroll McKay at the Gow School, a boarding school for students with dyslexia — and to sue their district to cover the cost. It asks what school choice really means when getting the right education requires resources most families don’t have. Along the way: what “wait to fail” means, how structured phonics instruction works, and the legal standard (a Carter case) that determines whether families can be reimbursed for tuition when a public school falls short. For more on this topic Read: The Education Freedom Tax Credit: What families of kids with disabilities need to know Listen: What if I think my child might have dyslexia? Read: How is special education funded? Explore: IEP Guide for Parents Read: The Brief: Understood News For a transcript and more resources, visit Zero Reject on Understood.org. You can also email us at [email protected].
Before 1975, there was no legal guarantee that a child with a disability could attend public school at all. Kids were hidden in attics and basements, sent to state institutions, or simply turned away. Rosemary Kennedy’s family concealed her intellectual disability for decades. It took a movement of parents, teachers, and advocates — like Rosemary’s sister Eunice — to build the legal rights families depend on today.
When the Trump administration gutted the Office for Civil Rights, around 25,000 complaints from families were stuck in limbo. One of them was filed by a mom in southern Indiana on behalf of her two kids with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. She’d spent years fighting for them after facing suspensions, exclusion, and a school that called her son a “bad kid.”
Beth Gellman-Beer spent her whole career fighting for kids with disabilities — first as a student written off as “lazy,” then as a federal civil rights attorney who found her dream job protecting students like her younger self. But on one ordinary night, a phone call changed everything: Her entire office had been eliminated.