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Disabled and multiply marginalized families conducted holistic, ongoing risk assessments and weighed tradeoffs across many choice moments. Intersecting disability, ableism, racism, and socioeconomic inequality increased the frequency, complexity, and embedded risks of educational options, constraining families’ available school settings. Findings extend beyond the pandemic by showing how ableism and special education structures stratify school choice for disabled students.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/aera-open-weighing-risks-how-families-of-disabled-children-made-school-choices-during-covid-19/590342/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/aera-open-weighing-risks-how-families-of-disabled-children-made-school-choices-during-covid-19/590342.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Pentious","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the paper explain caregivers’ school-choice decisions for disabled children during COVID-19?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It shows that caregivers’ positions shape decisions through holistic, ongoing risk assessments and tradeoff weighing across many choice moments during the early pandemic.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What role do disability and ableism play in families’ schooling options?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The paper argues that disability and ableism, intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality, increase the frequency, complexity, and risks embedded in each educational option.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the research extend beyond the pandemic?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It reveals that ableism and special education structures continue to complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},590342,1792193014,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},1374404730887,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","AERA Open  \nJanuary-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251349156  \nArticle reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero)  \nWeighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School  \nChoices During COVID-19  \nRachel Elizabeth Fish  \nSmith College  \nAlexandra Freidus  \nUniversity of Connecticut  \nErica O. Turner  \nUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison  \nIn this paper we show how positionality shapes caregivers’decisions about children’s schooling by expanding on research on Blackfamilies’educational decision making to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply marginalized children made educational choices. The families of disabled children in our sample made holistic ongoing risk assessments and weighed tradeoffs based on their positions during a period of time marked by multiple ongoing choice moments: the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that disability and ableism—intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality—increased the frequency, ongoing nature, and complexity of choice moments as well as the risks embedded in each educational option. This intersectional marginalization constrained the options available to families, forcing them to choose between school settings that caused different kinds of harm. Our findings extend beyond the pandemic by revealing how ableism and special education structures complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students.  \nKeywords: decision making, disability studies, parents and families, race, special education, social class, in-depth interviewing  \nIntroduction  \nResearch on how families make decisions about schools and educational options frequently relies on “market-based, color-evasive logics”(Posey-Maddox et al., 2021, p. 39) that assume that families “function as objective, rational choosers who maximize benefits for their children”(Cooper, 2005, p. 175). Under this rational-choice framework, which argues that families will select schools offering services that meet students’“special needs and interests”(Chubb & Moe, 1990, p, 6), any poor outcomes resulting from school choices are presumed to be the result of individual families’ poor decisions. Yet, this dominant framing ignores how families’social positions may shape the choices available to students and the choices families make for their children.  \nIn response to the rational-choice literature, recent scholarship has argued that educational decision making is actually a complex socially embedded process (Butler & Quarles, 2024; Cooper, 2005; Debs et al., 2023; Freidus, 2019; Kafka,  \n2022; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021; Roda & Wells, 2013) . In the words of Jabbar and Lenhoff (2019), families choose schools in response to both push and pull factors, and those choices are “highly subjective, emotional, value-laden, stratified by social class, and shaped by social networks, perceptions, social capital, and identity”(p. 354) . These choices are laborious and burdensome for many families (Butler & Quarles, 2024; Cuddy, 2025; Gordon, 2021; Pattillo, 2015), especially those with the most restricted access to information, resources, and the social grapevines required to navigate the “rules of the game” successfully (Lareau et al., 2016) . By examining the role that structural forces such as racism and ableism play in families’ educational decision making, we can better understand the processes and outcomes of their choices.  \nCooper (2005) introduced “positioned choice”(p. 175) to explain how low-income and working-class Black mothers consider structural constraints and the legitimate roles of subjectivity, emotion, and culture in educational decision  \nCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons  \nAttribution-N","cbCaiaqXOY7wImcw","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaqXOY7wImcw","pdf",515709,18,"English","# Introduction\n## Rethinking rational-choice explanations\n## Positioned choice and socially embedded decision making","[{\"question\":\"How does the paper explain caregivers’ school-choice decisions for disabled children during COVID-19?\",\"answer\":\"It shows that caregivers’ positions shape decisions through holistic, ongoing risk assessments and tradeoff weighing across many choice moments during the early pandemic.\"},{\"question\":\"What role do disability and ableism play in families’ schooling options?\",\"answer\":\"The paper argues that disability and ableism, intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality, increase the frequency, complexity, and risks embedded in each educational option.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the research extend beyond the pandemic?\",\"answer\":\"It reveals that ableism and special education structures continue to complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students.\"}]","AERA Open - Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During COVID-19 | PDF",1792069381,45]