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This month’s issue of Principal Leadership focuses on the whole child, an emphasis that prioritizes students’ education, health, and safety. Relatedly, partnerships with families are critical to student well-being, belonging, and success. These relationships are not only best practice; they are also incorporated into multiple legal mandates.

This article provides an overview of two laws that prioritize family involvement and partnerships: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Building on this legal foundation, we present related research to bring dimension to the laws and provide insight into possibilities for their implementation. Both the legal and practical dimensions are important for principals to consider.

Compliance

ESEA emphasizes, “that parents play an integral role in assisting their child’s learning; that parents are encouraged to be actively involved in their child’s education at school, [and] that parents are full partners in their child’s education…” (U.S. Department of Education, 2025, p. 3). As a condition of receiving Title I, Part A funds, school districts must jointly develop a policy with families “that establishes the LEA’s [local education agency’s] expectations and objectives for meaningful parent and family engagement” (p. 7). Substantively, the policy needs to address a number of issues, including how the school district will implement family engagement strategies, promote capacity for implementing effective strategies, and conduct an annual evaluation to determine barriers to meaningful partnerships and identify ways to remove these barriers.

Family participation is also a cornerstone of IDEA’s procedural and substantive requirements, including the right to notice about eligibility determinations and the type and location of services, participation as a member of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) team, the right to request an evaluation, and the right to request independent evaluation. As these examples illustrate, IDEA (2004) was written with a vision for families to be collaborators in school processes. Codifying this into the legislation was critical, as families are integral to the decision-making processes for their children throughout special education (Turnbull & Turnbull, 2015).

Research Supporting Implementation

The law as it’s written can look different from how it’s implemented or experienced by families. In their work, Fenton and colleagues (2017) discussed at length the ambiguity in both the language of “meaningful engagement” with families in ESEA and “meaningful participation” in IDEA. Research offers nuanced insight to bring the law to life, particularly regarding pitfalls to avoid and ways to promote meaningful partnerships with families.

To truly understand pitfalls and possibilities, it is important to look beyond the macrolevel laws and policies to see how they actually work in practice. For one, families do not necessarily have access to these laws, they do not receive preparation on the accompanying substantive rights and procedural safeguards, nor are they necessarily aware that IDEA and ESEA have parent participation inscribed within them.

Second, families are often engaged in relationships with schools that are shaped and driven by the expectations of school personnel. This means they are expected to meet within school hours, to review and understand the legal and practitioner-heavy jargon of school documentation, and communicate in English (Harry, 1992; Ong-Dean, 2009). This creates a large disconnect between families and schools, especially working families, newly migrated families, and multilingual families. Furthermore, decades of research illuminates hidden rubrics (Harry & Ocasio-Stoutenburg, 2020) and the potential for biases to inform partnerships with families, including ableist perspectives, stereotypes of families of color, and biases that translate into opportunities given, punitive responses toward students, and negative interactions with families (Banks et al., 2025; Tefera & Fischman, 2024).

Finally, compliance with the law says little about the quality of implementation. To illustrate, a parent may feel that their input is sought as a box to check for compliance as opposed to a rich and meaningful opportunity to understand a child’s strengths and needs. A research study by Ocasio-Stoutenburg & Harry (2021) presented the case of Rhonda, the mother of a 17-year-old Black girl with a disability who had been requesting that her daughter be included in general education classes since the ninth grade, a request that was finally honored in her senior year. During the COVID-19 stay-in-place orders, Rhonda learned that not only was the paraprofessional inconsistently bringing her to the requested classes, but she was also reminding her daughter how inconvenient it was to do so. This situation raises questions about both compliance and the authenticity and trust that make for strong student school-family partnerships, and in turn, supporting the whole child.

As such, the law can drift away from its intent in implementation. As an alternative approach, the underpinnings of the law can serve as guideposts, and the individuals responsible for implementation can offer rich and thoughtful nuance to fill in the gray areas of the law, in ways that honor the intent of the law. This approach has the potential to shift practice from a compliance driven approach to one that is more equitable, collaborative, humanizing, and relational (Ishimaru, 2019; Ishimaru et al., 2016).

“To truly understand pitfalls and possibilities, it is important to look beyond the macrolevel laws and policies to see how they actually work in practice.”

Recommendations

In light of the issues raised in this article, we include the following recommendations:

The principal’s role in shaping culture. Not only do administrators come into direct contact with families, but they also serve an important role in shaping the school culture and environments to be inclusive of families and students (Ocasio-Stoutenburg et al., 2024). Importantly, they can model the types of behaviors and engagements that ensure that families are supported, valued, and treated as important collaborators (Shepherd et al., 2025).

Amplifying family voices. Families are not only essential partners to school personnel, but they are experts in their children. While teachers and school speech pathologists, for example, hold expertise in instructional and communication supports for students, families support students’ holistic well-being outside of the classroom and school context. As such, it is important to view families as critical partners in learning about students and ensuring their success.

Moving beyond compliance. IDEA and ESEA provide specific legal requirements regarding relationships with families. That said, it is possible to achieve compliance without honoring the intent of the law. It is crucial to move beyond compliance as the primary driving force. Recognizing the individual, holistic, and unique needs of every student is paramount to the educational system. The system is only as strong as what it provides for its most vulnerable members, which are undoubtedly students with disabilities, and students who have been historically and multiply marginalized.

Maria M. Lewis, JD, PhD, is an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University. She teaches courses on education law and leadership for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg, PhD, is an associate professor of special education at the Pennsylvania State University. She teaches preservice special education teachers, while also preparing scholars to engage in ethical and community-centered research.

References

Banks, J., Kea, C., & Coleman, M. R. (2025). Making meaningful connections: Facilitating schoolwide family engagement with culturally diverse families. Teaching Exceptional Children, 57(3), 186–194. doi.org/10.1177/00400599231182048

Fenton, P., Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L., & Harry, B. (2017). The power of parent engagement: Sociocultural considerations in the quest for equity. Theory Into Practice, 56(3), 214–225. doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2017.1355686

Harry, B. (1992). Restructuring the participation of African-American parents in special education. Exceptional children, 59(2), 123–131. doi.org/10.1177/001440299205900205

Harry, B., & Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L. (2020). Meeting families where they are: Building equity through advocacy with diverse schools and communities. Teachers College Press.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 (1990, 1997, 2004)

Ishimaru, A. M. (2019). From family engagement to equitable collaboration. Educational Policy, 33(2), 350–385. doi.org/10.1177/0895904817691841

Ishimaru, A. M., Torres, K. E., Salvador, J. E., Lott, J., Williams, D. M. C., & Tran, C. (2016). Reinforcing deficit, journeying toward equity: Cultural brokering in family engagement initiatives. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 850–882. doi.org/10.3102/0002831216657178

Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L., Davis, J., & Lewis, M. (2024). Principals as co-advocates for caregivers of children with disabilities: Possibilities and realizations beyond IDEA’s collaborative ideal. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 27(4), 85–104. doi.org/10.1177/15554589241288885

Ocasio-Stoutenburg, L., & Harry, B. (2021). Case studies in building equity through family advocacy in special education: A companion volume to meeting families where they are. Teachers College Press.

Ong-Dean, C. (2009). Distinguishing disability: Parents, privilege, and special education. University of Chicago Press.

Shepherd, K. G., Kervick, C. T., & Haines, S. J. (2025). Reflecting on the promise and future of IDEA: Family participation and partnership in special education. Journal of Special Education Leadership, 38(2), 120–131.

Tefera, A. A., & Fischman, G. E. (2024). Beyond good intentions in special education policy: Engaging with critical disability intersectional research. Qualitative Inquiry, 30(1), 48–58. doi.org/10.1177/10778004231165461

Turnbull, R., & Turnbull, A. (2015). Looking backward and framing the future for parents’ aspirations for their children with disabilities. Remedial and Special Education, 36(1), 52–57. doi.org/10.1177/0741932514553124

U.S. Department of Education (2025). Parent and family engagement. ed.gov/media/document/parent-and-family-engagement-guidance-2025-109202.pdf