I’ve come across a recurring issue in IEP meetings, special education meetings, and professional conversations: Many professionals don’t make clear distinctions between laws, policies, and practices.
At first glance, I can see how this might not appear important, but the distinctions are of great importance.
The rights of students and families, and the professional freedom of school staff, are impacted very differently depending on which category of constraint is being applied.
It’s taken some years of experience to see this, and it has helped to incorporate relevant lessons from my work. -Things I understand better now than I did toward the beginning of my career, about 20 years ago. Stick with me and we’ll put it all together.
One lesson is that the best way to understand or predict the behavior of a group of people within a system is to look at their incentives and disincentives. I’m by no means a behaviorist, and I am deeply interested in the complex motivations of any individual, but there is no better way to understand the behavior of an otherwise anonymous class of people.
Laws, policies, and practices are efforts to apply logic to our work with students and families. Another lesson from my therapeutic work is that the benefits of logic are limited. Still, we should endeavor to get as much benefit as we can from it. This requires us to make distinctions between laws, policies, and practices. From what I can perceive, many people group these three things together in a conceptual category called something like “rules.”
I will break them down briefly.
Practices can be defined within an organization simply as “what we usually or always do.”
Policies in the context of schools are the written organizational directives and limitations set forth by school administration.
Laws are rules set forth by the government at local, state, or federal levels, and are enforced through consequences delivered by those same entities.
Pretty simple, right?
Why are the distinctions important?
A school’s practices may or may not be consistent with their policies. A district or school’s policies may or may not be consistent with law. And various parts of special education law are subject to different interpretations. You can see that it really matters what category is being discussed in any given instance. They draw on very different levels of authority and are therefore more or less subject to negotiation in the collaborative special education process.
It’s easy for anyone involved in special education to feel overwhelmed, bulldozed, inadequate, and other unpleasant experiences. This includes students, families, teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, and counselors. It is the responsibility of school staff to be aware of the distinctions between practices, policies, and rules. We cannot expect the same of students and their families. In fact, we have a great responsibility as paid professionals to make these distinctions clear to parents and guardians, and students as developmentally appropriate.
I will illustrate with the example of a parent of a child who is in the special education eligibility determination process.
The parent feels that an autism screening should be included in the eligibility evaluations. The special education administrator tells the parent that the district cannot include one. The special education administrator does not indicate whether their position is based on their opinion of what is appropriate, a school or district policy, or a law. (For the record it’s a position based on their opinion, which is up for discussion and negotiation among the team including the parent.)
The special education administrator is in a position of great power relative to the parent. Meetings generally take place on the administrator’s home turf, they are experienced with these meetings, and they are the experts on special education. The parent on the other hand enters the administrator’s turf for the meeting, may have never had any experience with special education meetings, and is not trained and experienced in special education. We can generally assume that the parent is under stress in this situation, and not in a good position to challenge the declarations of the school administrator. In most cases, the parent is likely to assume that what the expert school administrator says are simply “rules.”
Given these circumstances, when the school administrator says “the district cannot include an autism screening” without explaining whether this is based on opinion, practice, policy, or law, I consider this an abuse of power. In the collaborative process of special education, district employees have a responsibility to delineate the scope of their authority in any given instance.
Unfortunately, this example is not the worst of it. I’ve certainly heard school officials make reference to non-existant “rules”, which they probably believe exist somewhere. This is hilariously and poigniantly described in this article about Cambridge Public Schools serving cold cheeseburgers to students with autism. It becomes more problematic as we incorporate my lesson regarding incentives and disincentives, and consider conscious and unconscious motivations as we must in order to account for the behavior of individuals and groups.
While the example offered previously is clearly sympathetic to the parent, I am also sympathetic toward the school administrators. They are almost always under a lot of pressure to preserve the resources of the school district by keeping spending on special education as low as possible. Depending on their district and superiors, their job security is either largely or entirely dependent on their ability to restrain services/spending. The risk of losing their job threatens not only their income, but also their membership in their work community, and their identity as school officials. Those are the big and easy incentives to understand but there are also more gradual incentives, such as making decisions that keep the school administrator in the good graces of their boss and make their next meeting with them more pleasant.
Addressing sometimes unconscious motivations, the school administrator is not particularly motivated to delineate between practices, policies, and law. In fact, they may not be especially motivated to even understand the differences between practices, policies, and laws. Having a fuzzy understanding may actually be a better position for them to restrain spending from, and therefore maintain their income, employment, and good graces of superiors. And, increasing my sympathy for the school administrator, they are often pressured and expected to behave as if special education laws are clear and coherent, despite the fact that they often are not. These pressures leave school administrators, teachers, and counselors exquisitely primed for imposter phenomenom, as described in a previous column (Where Special Education Law Meets Imposter Phenomenon).
One path toward increased personal freedom and agency is in becoming more aware of our motivations. That’s a kind of growth that can happen on both individual and group levels. It frees us up from our habitual reactions, and liberates us to consider a wider array of possibilities. If you work in special education, it’s your responsibility to understand and clearly delineate between practices, policies, and laws. It will also make you better and more free in your efforts to serves students and families.
Michael Murray, LMHC, M.Ed 