Introduction

The existing scholarship has documented that excessive school punishment harms students' achievement and mental health (Chen et al., 2021; Losen, 2015; Morris & Perry, 2016) and also increases the likelihood of school dropout (Caton, 2012; Shedd, 2015). These collective harms are especially pronounced among racially marginalized groups (Bell, 2020; Caton, 2012; Chen et al., 2021; Losen, 2015; Morris & Perry, 2016; Mowen, 2017). Although the literature on school punishment extends over five decades, most studies focus exclusively on suspension and its negative implications for students, even though the gamut of school punishment is much broader (e.g., restraint and seclusion) and its impacts can be even more consequential for students with other intersecting identities (e.g., children with disabilities). While restraint and seclusion are becoming part of the larger national conversation on school policy (Abamu, 2019; Clasen-Kelly, 2024; Hess, 2024; Platt & Perera, 2024), their use remains understudied in empirical scholarship.

The U.S. Department of Education (2020) provides the following definitions for restraint and seclusion:

1. Physical restraint: A personal restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to move his or her torso, arms, legs, or head freely.
2. Mechanical restraint: The use of any device or equipment to restrict a student's freedom of movement.
3. Seclusion: The involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving.

Black children comprised eighteen percent of students with disabilities but made up twenty-six percent of those who experienced physical restraint, thirty-four percent of those restrained using mechanical devices, and twenty-two percent of the students subjected to seclusion (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). Additionally, white children represented forty-eight percent of students with disabilities but made up fifty-two percent of the students who experienced physical restraint, thirty-three percent of those restrained using mechanical devices, and sixty percent of those subjected to seclusion (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2020). Asian and Latino/a families are the least likely to experience restraint or seclusion.

Given the racial disparities in school restraint and seclusion, the scarcity of research in this area limits education stakeholders' understanding of how school restraint and seclusion impact Black and white families. It also hinders policymakers' and practitioners' efforts to create safe and inclusive classrooms with high parental involvement. Given the racial disparities in restraint and seclusion data, we contribute to the school punishment literature by conducting, to our knowledge, the first investigation into how parents of Black and white children with disabilities respond to restraint and seclusion practices that they consider harmful.

Literature Review

The literature on parents' efforts to challenge race and disability-based exclusion spans several decades and began with attempts to desegregate public schools. Though scholars situate the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education as the starting point of parents' efforts to challenge school authority, Martinez-Cola (2022) illuminates dozens of cases in which parents challenged school integration and created a foundation for Brown. While school segregation is often framed as a social problem that solely affected African American families, Asian American (Tape v. Hurley, 1885), Native American (Piper v. Big Pine, 1924), and Mexican American (Mendez v. Westminster, 1947) families also challenged school exclusion on the basis of race in legal proceedings. Following the arguments made in Brown v. Board of Education, Scott (1989) shows how disability rights leaders adopted ideas from the civil rights movement to challenge the legitimacy of keeping students out of school due to their disability status. In PARC v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1971) and Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia (1972) rulings held that students with disabilities were entitled to an education and paved the way for the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, which was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990.

Although legislative gains and favorable court decisions have allowed parents, caregivers, and disability advocates to challenge practices that adversely impact people with disabilities, they continue to experience resistance. Studies show schools privilege affluent, well-connected parents and allow them to secure advantages for their children (Lareau, 2011; Pollock, 2010; Voulgarides, 2024). On the other hand, parents who did not have access to wider networks were often given fewer resources and found their children were targeted for punishment (Voulgarides, 2024). Additionally, scholars have studied how parents, caregivers, and advocates strategize to overcome barriers and contest discriminatory practices. Angell and Solomon (2017) show that parents have attended parent advocacy trainings, spoken at school board meetings, written letters to school administrators, shared knowledge about children's rights at individualized education plan (IEP) meetings, and worked closely with legal professionals. As parents continue to express the need to fight for services for their child and report contentious relationships with schools (Rea et al., 2024), it is essential to understand how they respond after learning that school officials subjected their children to harmful restraint and seclusion tactics.

In recent years, families have pursued legal action against school officials because staff members harmed children through their use of restraint and seclusion. In I.D. v. Wetumpka Pre-School and Child Development Center (2016), Elizabeth Dunn sued the preschool because officials continued to restrain her daughter, who has Down Syndrome, to a highchair for multiple hours a day against her physical therapists' recommendations. Dunn alleged that the continued use of restraints disrupted her daughter's development in walking and led to the onset of psychological challenges. In 2021, parents and disability advocates in the Fairfax County Public School system settled a lawsuit over the district's use of restraint and seclusion involving students with special needs (Barthel, 2021). The settlement indicated that Fairfax County Public Schools would end its use of seclusion by the 2022-2023 school year and authorize restraint only when an imminent risk of harm is present.

Although parents have used the courts to challenge school punishment practices, no law guarantees legal representation throughout this process. The absence of a federal law that regulates the use of restraint and seclusion and ineffective state laws suggests legal challenges may be a primary mechanism for correcting unlawful school punishment practices. Considering the harms associated with school punishment and historical reliance on the courts, it is essential to know how parents respond to restraint and seclusion practices that they perceive as harmful. Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners would also benefit from understanding the expenses parents adopt as they challenge school restraint and seclusion practices.

Current debates surrounding the efficacy and administration of school punishment have motivated scholars to examine the collateral consequences of punitive approaches in schools (Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 2001; Hirschfield, 2008; Kupchik, 2010; Morris & Perry, 2016). While much of this research has considered how school punishment matters for future criminal justice contact (Novak, 2019; Novak & Krohn, 2021; Pesta, 2018), existing research has also begun to investigate how school punishment is associated with various health outcomes (Chen et al., 2021; Duart et al., 2023; Prins et al., 2023; Ramey, 2015). In fact, school punishment can be particularly consequential throughout the life course. For example, scholars have found harsh school punishment to be significantly associated with depression and depressive symptoms, experimental drug use, and personality and behavioral disorder diagnoses throughout adolescence (Duarte, 2023; Prins et al., 2023). Furthermore, the effects of experiencing severe punishment in schools appear to persist into adulthood, as students who are punished harshly are more likely to experience greater insulin resistance (Chen et al., 2021), cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and obesity (Afifi et al., 2013), and suicide death (Duarte, 2023) in adulthood. Considering the adverse health and social outcomes associated with school punishment, the importance of parental challenges to restraint and seclusion cannot be understated.

In multiple publications, the U.S. Department of Education has advised against the use of restraint and seclusion as disciplinary measures. Though there is no empirical support that restraint and seclusion tactics are effective at addressing problematic behaviors, school officials continue to use them to punish students (Ryan & Gage, 2022). A growing body of literature demonstrates the adverse effects of restraint and seclusion on students (Connolly, 2017; Nunno et al., 2006; Nunno et al., 2022; Westling et al., 2010). For instance, Westling and colleagues (2010) surveyed parents whose children had been secluded and/or restrained at school and found that ninety-two and two tenths percent of their children experienced emotional trauma, forty-two and two tenths percent were physically injured, and thirty-three and five tenths percent showed obvious signs of physical pain. Furthermore, Connolly (2017) reviewed due process hearing 1 narratives and found reports of post-traumatic stress disorder, requiring counseling and trauma therapy, refusing to return to a school setting, and having nightmares because they were secluded.

The trauma from experiencing harsh punishment can also manifest through problem behaviors. For example, children may run away, inflict self-injuries, or wet the bed (Connolly, 2017; Westling et al., 2010). Not only are these events of punitive disciplinary actions traumatic for the student experiencing them, but they can also be traumatic for the students watching it happen (Mohr et al., 1998). Unfortunately, those most likely to experience these types of disciplinary actions are students with disabilities (Gage et al., 2022; Gagnon et al., 2017; Katsiyannis et al., 2020) and minorities (Katsiyannis et al., 2020). While the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was adopted to solidify the school environment as a safe space for children with special needs, no federal law regulates the use of restraint or seclusion in public schools (Kim, 2022), and state laws are often inconsistent and lack enforcement (Clasen-Kelly, 2024; Platt & Perera, 2024; State of Illinois, 2021). Consequently, the absence of effective political oversight has allowed schools to become sites of trauma for children with disabilities and necessitated parental intervention.

Theoretical Framework

We rely on DisCrit to help explain the intersectional aspects of race and disability in students' and parents' experiences with school officials. DisCrit is a framework developed from critical race and intersectionality theories to investigate how notions of race and ableism shape social outcomes, such as educational attainment (Annamma et al., 2012; Connor et al., 2015). Scholars often use DisCrit as a theoretical lens to examine multiply marginalized students' experiences within K-12 institutions (Annamma et al., 2018; Connor et al., 2019). Relying on disability studies and critical race theory, DisCrit provides insight into how social structures, such as schools, uphold whiteness and ability as normative and highly valued constructs. Theorists emphasize that whiteness and ability are the most valued properties in society and are associated with inalienable access to legal rights and schools (Annamma et al., 2014; Kohli et al., 2017). Rather than view race and ability as isolated oppressive entities, DisCrit compels scholars to acknowledge the consequences associated with these constructs as their combined effects create unique negative outcomes. For example, Mayes (2023) documents how race influenced the disability labels that students received and their placement in segregated special education classes. In studies that examine racial disparities in special education placement and school punishment, scholars have used DisCrit to highlight the voices of marginalized youth and offer a narrative that counters the deficit ideology embedded within white supremacy (Alaníz, 2024; Annamma & Morrison, 2018; Connor et al., 2019; Fisher & Fisher, 2022).

The research questions for this study are as follows: (1) How do parents of Black and white children with disabilities respond to restraint and seclusion practices that they perceive as harmful? (2) How do their responses to restraint and seclusion practices that they perceive as harmful differ by race, social class, and the child's gender?

Data and Methods

We utilized snowball sampling to recruit participants. Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2010) describe snowball sampling as a method that explores a network for referrals, and each research contact potentially yields additional participants. We also posted a flyer on Facebook to increase our recruitment and diversify our sample. Three special education advocates volunteered to serve as gatekeepers and assist with recruitment. Gatekeepers provide access to a population that is difficult to locate (Greig et al., 2012). The respective advocates have extensive experience helping parents of children with disabilities throughout the Midwest, East Coast, and Southern states advocate for their children when school officials subject them to punishment. The parent advocates were not employed by any school district at the time of the study.

We recruited 50 parents of Black and white children with disabilities to participate in this study. There was one parent dyad in the study. Each parent spoke about one child. Their children were diagnosed with at least one of the following cognitive or behavioral conditions: autism, attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), nonverbal learning disability, sensory processing disorder (SPD), intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), agenesis of the corpus callosum, cerebral palsy, and pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS). We did not interview children in this study. The parent demographics are as follows: white (41), Black (7), and Indian (2). Thirteen parents identified their child as Black, and 37 parents identified their child as white. The parents featured in this study reside in the following states: Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Forty-eight of the participants were mothers and two were fathers. Parents referenced six girls and forty-four boys. All the parents featured in this study possessed prior knowledge about restraint and seclusion.

Parents stated school officials suspended, restrained, and secluded their children between one and over thirty times. Eleven parents identified their family as low-income, and seven were unemployed at the time of this study. Low-income families had household incomes between $0 and $30,000. Three Black and eight white parents identified themselves as low-income. Four Black and seventeen white parents stated their family was from a middle-class background with a household income between $50,000 and $110,000. Two Indian and sixteen white parents expressed that their family was affluent and had a household income that exceeded $150,000. To protect the participants' confidentiality, we do not disclose their state or school district. Periodically, we conceal the parents' occupation due to the risk associated with a breach of confidentiality.

We asked each parent participant a series of semi-structured interview questions about their views regarding their child's experience being secluded and restrained in school and the actions they took to protect their child from further harm. The participants were asked to respond to questions/prompts such as:

1. How many times has your child been restrained or secluded in school?
2. Tell me about a time when a school official restrained or secluded your child.
3. How did the use of restraint or seclusion affect your employment?
4. How much money did you spend advocating for your child?
5. How did school officials respond to you and your family when you began advocating for your child?

We interviewed participants online via Zoom or phone at a time of their choosing to maximize comfort throughout the interview process. Additionally, to protect the confidentiality of each participant, we used pseudonyms throughout the study. Interviews lasted between 45 and 75 minutes. Throughout each interview, we conducted member checks to assess the validity of the data by sharing our interpretations of the participant's account with each participant (Creswell & Miller, 2000). The participants helped clarify inaccuracies in our interpretations, which aided in the analysis process. We recorded and transcribed the interviews. Next, we open-coded the interview data, which consists of studying every interview section, summarizing each statement, and labeling it with an appropriate code (Boeije, 2002). We selected open coding because this technique helps construct a detailed conceptual data model from which categories and themes can emerge (Saldaña, 2009). Then, we used focused coding to construct categories without attributing attention to their properties or dimensions (Saldaña, 2009). We employed focused coding to construct the most pertinent categories and determine which initial codes best described the data.

Findings

Irrespective of the child's race or gender, white parents (ninety-two percent) were more likely to challenge harmful restraint and seclusion practices. Among white parents, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to initiate complaints with Child Protective Services (CPS) or withdraw their children from a school as a form of resistance before initiating due process proceedings. The costs associated with due process claims led white parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds to view this strategy as a last resort. However, white parents from middle-class and affluent backgrounds were more inclined to use due process or court proceedings as a primary strategy to challenge school restraint and seclusion practices that they perceived as harmful. Although middle-class and affluent white parents withdrew their children from school to protect them throughout the litigation process, most re-enrolled their children in the same school or district.

Black parents—regardless of their socioeconomic status—were more likely to withdraw their children and enroll them into a school outside of their initial district. Five Black parents (seventy-one percent) in our sample challenged school restraint and seclusion practices. Among Black parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds, two parents scheduled meetings with the principal before withdrawing their children. One Black parent from a low socioeconomic background contacted law enforcement after she withdrew her child due to visible bruises left by support staff following an instance of physical restraint. Among Black parents from a middle-class background, one parent challenged school restraint and seclusion practices in a due process hearing. Another parent contacted law enforcement officers to initiate a criminal investigation into a school official's misuse of restraint and seclusion. Because the criminal investigation proceeded too slowly to ease her concerns, she withdrew her son from this school. Lastly, two Black parents from middle-class backgrounds withdrew their children from school as a primary strategy to protect their children. None of the Black parents returned their child to their initial school.

Thirty-seven white parents and one Black parent expressed that they spent between $2,000 and $300,000 challenging school restraint and seclusion practices. The two Indian parents did not challenge the school's use of restraint or seclusion. Their expenditures included legal representation, disability advocates, full-time tutors, cognitive assessments, neuropsychological testing, and private school placement throughout the due process or court proceedings. Ten parents also characterized missed work hours, job loss, and unemployment as additional financial costs associated with challenging school restraint and seclusion practices.

The experiences of Amy and John, a white mother-father dyad, offer a fitting example of the expansive costs of challenging school practices. Amy and John, referred through a disability advocate and gatekeeper in this study, were from an affluent background. They identified their son, Michael (he/him), as an eleven-year-old white boy, and described him as incredibly curious, bright, and outgoing, with some difficulty regulating his emotions. They informed us that Michael was diagnosed with PANDAS, ADHD, and ODD. In one incident, a boy was bullying Michael at school, and Michael retaliated by pushing the boy. Following this incident, Amy stated that school officials tackled Michael and dragged him to the seclusion room. While Michael was in the seclusion room, school staff placed a different boy in the room, which led to another fight. Because school officials used aggressive restraint practices and placed Michael in a potentially dangerous situation in the seclusion room, Amy and John felt the need to protect him from the school. Immediately, they withdrew Michael and challenged the school's restraint and seclusion practices in a due process hearing. When speaking about the financial costs, John provided the following explanation:

We're into our second set of attorneys right now, and we're pushing $90,000. The most that I've gotten out of this is they [school officials] want a gag order on us, and they're gonna give us $15,000. That is so insulting to me. It's like, I'll pay another 15 grand for more lawyers just to tell the school to go piss off. I mean, right now, I don't expect any kind of justice when it comes to the law. I don't expect any kind of economic recompense. They were wrong, they knew they were wrong, and it's just a cover-up. That's all this is.

Although several scholars have argued that schools are structurally violent institutions, much of this literature has focused on how school practices harm racial minorities (Hammarén, 2022; Mayes, 2023; Wun, 2016a; Wun, 2016b; Wun, 2018). John's comments help us understand how structural violence in school settings negatively impacts white families with children who were labeled with a disability. Although they were able to spend $90,000 to challenge the school's use of restraint and seclusion, Census Bureau data shows their expenditures exceed the median household income ($74,580) in the United States (Guzman & Kollar, 2023). It also comprised nearly half of their annual income. Additionally, John's remarks imply that social class plays an important role in parents' ability to overcome school officials' efforts to silence families. Similar to research that demonstrated how school officials marginalized Black parents' complaints throughout the out-of-school suspension disciplinary process (Bell & Craig, 2023), John infers that school officials seek to conceal their misuse of restraint and seclusion. Thus, without substantial financial resources to afford legal representation, school officials hold considerable power, and parents navigate the disciplinary process at a disadvantage.

In another interview, Trisha discussed her experiences after she found our recruitment flyer in a disability support group on social media. Trisha and her daughter Lilly (they/them) are white, and Trisha informed us that Lilly was diagnosed with autism. Trisha also informed us that Lilly was a transgender girl. During our interview, Trisha stated that she withdrew Lilly from one school because school officials could not meet Lilly's educational needs. Eventually, she enrolled Lilly in a school that attempted to conceal their use of seclusion. Regarding this issue, Trisha offered the following viewpoint:

So, I went to this out-of-district school for a few months, and there was just heavy use of seclusion, like very, very frequent. They did inform us of the seclusion every day that it happened. However, I didn't understand that they were informing me as a legal obligation rather than trying to work out how to make it happen less. They would send us a paper, and it would say like 13 seconds or something. But it was very misleading because the 13 seconds was the amount of time it took to drag my kid to the seclusion room, not the hour that they kept my kid in the seclusion room. So, after a few months of this, my kid started getting suicidal.

When we asked Trisha how Lilly's experiences in school seclusion affected her employment, Trisha stated, "The point I wanna make is that there is literally no program in my area that is appropriate for kids like mine. I just withdrew them, and I legally homeschool now. My kid does have an official PTSD diagnosis from this [school seclusion]. Because we are pretty affluent, I actually have hired someone to basically be a home tutor companion." Trisha expressed that she paid Lilly's home tutor $50,000 annually for full-time employment. She also indicated that her husband spent an additional $20,000 on disability advocates and neuropsychological assessments.

Trisha's comments indicate that contesting school restraint and seclusion practices compel parents to consider adopting expenses beyond the fees associated with legal support. When parents withdraw their children from school to protect them from harmful seclusion and restraint tactics, providing their children with an education can become an expensive endeavor, and the responsibility may fall entirely on the parents. Trisha's account helps us understand that more affluent parents can remove their kids from schools because of restraint and seclusion practices and provide them with additional support to offset learning opportunities that exist in a traditional school setting. Trisha also emphasizes that parents may need assistance from disability advocates who understand the protections IDEA provides to students with disabilities and further testing to demonstrate the severity of their child's impairment. Collectively, the disability advocate and home tutoring expenses comprised nearly ninety-four percent of the median household income for families in the United States (Guzman & Kollar, 2023). They also represented thirty-five percent of Trisha and her husband's annual income. Therefore, parents must consider whether they can afford to provide their children with an education, obtain support from advocates, and take on the costs associated with psychological assessments without support from the public schools.

Another participant, Jessica, expressed interest in the study after watching an online discussion on restraint and seclusion that mentioned the first author of this study. She identified her family as affluent. At the time of our interview, Jessica's daughter Emily (she/her) was 12 years old, and Jessica described herself and Emily as white. In our interview, Jessica stated that Emily was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability, which hinders her ability to process the information that she sees. Emily was also diagnosed with mild ADHD and bipolar disorder. According to Jessica, Emily's extensive experience with restraint and seclusion began in the third grade:

We didn't find out that she was being restrained and secluded until April of 2019, and by then she was up to 20 instances and over a hundred hours in the closet without us knowing, because they called it a quiet room and time out and told us that it was a place where she could be taken away from whatever she was reacting to and be with another adult to calm down. … Basically, we're homeschooling now. Two of the days she was in there three times for over an hour, each time that we can [figure out]. Some of them weren't documented at all. Some of them were halfway documented, so we don't have complete information.

On one occasion, school officials left bruises on Emily and held the door shut as she tore pieces of her hair from her head with the skin attached. Because school officials placed Emily in a seclusion room on multiple occasions without Jessica or her husband's knowledge, they challenged the school's disciplinary practices in due process hearings and filed a federal lawsuit. When we inquired about the financial costs due to Emily's experience with seclusion and the lawsuit, Jessica offered the following remarks:

I had to decrease my time at work, not only to be able to pick her up, because they kept calling me to come pick her up. My husband could handle after three o'clock, but before that was a problem. So, I was working full-time, decreased to part-time. Now I homeschool in the morning, and then I work from two to eight, and I do some mobile work on the weekends when I'm not working at a clinic. And I think the biggest thing that I feel bad about is my older son. It has really taken away our time for him and also our money for him. I know our lawyer bill is … I try not to focus on it too much, but I think it's [between] $150,000 and $200,000 that we've done. And that doesn't include a lot of the out-of-pocket testing and a lot of the therapy that we've had to put her through to overcome the PTSD and provide some speech and therapy for the nonverbal learning disability. A lot of that is out of pocket because insurance doesn't cover it. So I would say we've probably spent $2- or $300,000 because of all of this for all the bills.

Whereas John and Trisha indicate that parents must consider the financial costs associated with hiring attorneys, compensating disability advocates, and soliciting neuropsychological assessments, Jessica emphasizes that some parents also confront the cost of lost wages and therapy fees. Collectively, Jessica and her husband's expenditures represented approximately four times the annual median income for all households in the United States (Guzman & Kollar, 2023). Their expenses also exceeded their annual household income. Additionally, Jessica estimated that reducing her work hours from full-time to part-time resulted in approximately $75,000 in lost revenue. She also stated that being restrained and secluded led medical professionals to diagnose Emily with PTSD. Consequently, Emily needed extensive therapy, and most of the expenses were not covered by Jessica's medical insurance. Finally, IDEA mandates that public schools provide a free, appropriate public education to meet the needs of a child with a disability at no cost to their parents (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). These services include specialized instruction and behavioral intervention. Though IDEA provides funds to states to pay for specialized instruction and therapy to address issues related to speech, the financial support ceases when parents withdraw their children from school. Thus, parents must also weigh the cost associated with the specialized instruction and services their child receives via IDEA against the desire to remove their child from school to protect them from harmful restraint and seclusion practices.

While white families were more likely to challenge school restraint and seclusion practices in due process and court proceedings, Black parents characterized their decisions as more focused on protecting their children from harmful disciplinary practices. One such example comes from participant Michelle. She described herself and her son Micah (he/him) as African American, and stated that he was diagnosed with autism at 18 months old. She shared that Micah's receptive language skills were excellent, but he had difficulty communicating his needs. At the time of the interview, Micah was in the second grade. Michelle stated Micah was doing well in school until his teacher reported that he had started to scratch teachers. Over the next seven weeks, she received fifteen letters informing her about Micah's behavior, and that school officials had restrained and placed him in a seclusion room. During the interview, she shared the following:

By that point, my husband and I were sick of them [school officials] like, "You are traumatizing my child. He is nonverbal. You're not following the IEP properly." They're not even asking him [or] letting them use this communication device. They're using the calm room [seclusion room] as a timeout room, which is a state infraction. They're doing calming protocols and writing it up as a timeout. That's not okay, because a timeout room should be nothing in it. It's just all that stuff and we were just ready for him to go [leave the school]. We really wanted him to go with people who understood autism well and would be able to work with him. We didn't do due process.

After learning about Micah's experience being restrained and placed in a seclusion room, we asked Michelle if she noticed any bruises on Micah's body. In response, she stated, "I check him at home because he can't come home and tell me. I've seen [them] and I have pictures of it. I've seen a round red mark on his butt, one on his right cheek, buttock cheek. And then sometimes scratches. I've seen some scratches around the neck."

Michelle's remarks—along with similar responses from six African American mothers—indicated that Black parents were less likely to challenge a school's use of restraint and seclusion in due process or federal proceedings. Despite Michelle's middle-class background, she did not pursue due process. When we inquired why she did not challenge the school's use of restraint and seclusion, she explained:

He is a child of color, and he is going against [being compared to] white, Caucasian males and maybe some females, who may only have one writeup or maybe two, and he's gone [look] like he's a monster with 15 writeups. So, we kept him home for three weeks so that he could reset, [and] get rid of all whatever memories he might have of that place, and so that we can go forth with the new school. And so that's where we are. He has twin sisters that are younger, and he has not hit them. He's not scratching. He's not pulling hair and all that kind of stuff, so it's something that's going on there that's not okay. So, we kept him home because at that point, I didn't feel like it was safe.

Furthermore, Michelle's account suggests school practices appear anti-Black and anti-disability. DisCrit reminds us that whiteness and ability are among American society's most privileged social identities (Annamma et al., 2014; Annamma et al., 2018). Additionally, DisCrit acknowledges that race and disability influence how an individual's behavior is conceptualized and surveilled (Annamma & Handy, 2021). Because Blackness and disability are denigrated and conceptualized as violent identities, Michelle suggests that the convergence of those two identities will lead school officials to portray Micha as a "monster." Michelle's remarks imply that schools may privilege white children who are not labeled with behavioral conditions, and such comments are consistent with the historical account of racial integration in public schools, as Black students and students with disabilities were barred from attending public schools with white students until the federal government compelled schools to educate them (Mayes, 2023). Although three Black families sought intervention from law enforcement or the courts, all the Black parents emphasized the need to protect their children from harmful restraint and seclusion practices. Therefore, Black parents from low socioeconomic and middle-class backgrounds viewed a combination of contacting law enforcement (2), initiating lawsuits (1), and primarily school withdrawal (7) as their strategies to challenge school restraint and seclusion practices.

In response to school integration mandates, school officials criminalized Blackness and disability, placing them on pathways to school punishment and special education settings (Delmont, 2016; Kupchik & Henry, 2023; Mayes, 2023). Although Michelle did not mention affordability as a reason for not challenging the school's use of restraint and seclusion, it should be noted that the expenses outlined by Amy, John, Trisha, and Jessica exceed the annual median household incomes for Black families ($52,860). Given the historical disadvantages Black families have experienced in access to education, home ownership, and credit, challenging school restraint and seclusion practices in due process hearings may not be a realistic option for families like Michelle's. It is important to note, however, that one Black parent challenged school restraint and seclusion practices in a due process hearing, and two Black parents contacted law enforcement officers to initiate a criminal investigation into a school official's misuse of restraint and seclusion.

In addition to the financial costs, white middle-class and affluent parents described how retaliation from school officials, state violence, and household discord influenced their decision to challenge school restraint and seclusion practices. Specifically, when school officials could not silence parents who used their financial resources to hire legal or disability advocates, some parents expressed that school officials retaliated against them by filing false complaints with Child Protective Services (CPS). Because their children were diagnosed with conditions that influenced their behavior, some parents worked diligently to establish a daily routine that helped their children maintain a stable home life. However, school officials' complaints to CPS triggered invasive investigations that disrupted parents' households for several months. Consequently, parents felt compelled to weigh the perceived benefits of winning a lawsuit against the immediate and long-term adverse effects of a CPS investigation.

When Amy and John described the process to challenge Michael's school's use of restraint and seclusion, John unexpectedly revealed how school officials retaliated against them:

CPS got called on us as a retaliatory and intimidation tactic. There is a saying in the special needs community: "It isn't if CPS gets called on you; it's when." And it's all because the school is using them as a tool to either push people out of the school or to intimidate them into behaving correctly. So, that's what they did to us. I mean, the CPS worker who came into our home, she said this was a frivolous call. And she said, if I were you, I'd go after the school. She said, "There is no way that I should be wasting our time on this."

Several scholars have characterized the child welfare system as an oppressive state institution that targets Black, Native, Latinx, and poor families of all backgrounds (Briggs et al., 2021; Roberts, 2022). Through extensive interviews with Black parents, Roberts (2022) describes how the child welfare system subjects families to intense surveillance, inappropriately removes children from their parents, and places children on a pathway to incarceration. John's remarks imply that the criminalization of students with disabilities extends to their immediate family and can lead school officials to invoke support from other state institutions, such as the child welfare system. Similar to the universal carceral apparatus detailed in Shedd (2015), John suggests white children with disabilities are also subjected to extensive surveillance regardless of their social class. As scholars characterize schools as structurally violent institutions, John's remarks provide insight into how schools work in opposition to the needs of white, affluent children with disabilities.

Like the unexpected disclosure John made in the interview, Linda also shared that CPS was investigating her family. Linda is Chris's (he/him) paternal aunt, and she adopted him after he was removed from his biological parents' care at the age of two due to physical abuse. Linda identified herself and Chris as white. She expressed that Chris was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, and trauma stressor disorder. During our interview, Linda shared that school officials had restrained Chris dozens of times and left bruises on his body:

The only time that Chris had been bruised was that incident I told you about where the bus driver and the bus aide, and it was his special education bus, grabbed him by his arms and dragged him down the center aisle of the bus, and they kept the door closed. So I actually followed the bus up to the school. He had a handprint bruise imprinted around his arm. I brought it to the administration's attention. I brought him to my physician. I had it documented. I had it photographed. I contacted the Sheriff's office, who in turn contacted the resource officer for the school. That officer reviewed the video, but would not permit me to see it, because other students were there. And he told me that you should have seen the way that your child was behaving. There was no disciplinary action taken against anybody involved, even though the school has a no-hands-on policy for the bus driver and the bus aide. And I furnished all of this information to Child Protective Services, and they just don't get involved with investigating the school that way.

Linda also described how the investigation impacted her household and other children in the home:

It makes my husband want to withdraw from Chris's care and some of the management of his behaviors because I stay at home, and he works, and he has a security clearance with his job. We have other children in the home, like his 15-year-old sister, who was abused, and she has PTSD. And she remembers being in the care of her parents and witnessing domestic violence, and CPS coming and the police coming, and removing her and arresting her mother. So, she's triggered. She goes into a meltdown, and then she becomes terrified that she's going to be removed from our care. Chris also has a sister who is eight years old and has been diagnosed with selective mutism. And when these people [CPS] come into our home, she just won't speak. With the constant intrusion of the state it makes it very, very difficult to do the things effectively that we need to do as parents. I mean, I even have a prescription from our developmental pediatrician to be able to swaddle him or to give good pressure for that sensory input, just to kind of cover my own butt. And we're still afraid to do those kinds of things because, actually, the last words that the case worker said when she was at our home, the day that the school called her was "until next time," because that's how frequently they're coming to my home.

Linda's comments demonstrate how school officials retaliate against parents who challenge school restraint practices. Her account suggests school officials were not interested in working with her to identify effective alternatives to harmful restraint practices. Instead, school officials sought to silence her advocacy efforts by initiating multiple CPS investigations and disrupting their household. Furthermore, challenging school restraint and seclusion has the potential to harm other children in the home. In this way, Linda's remarks provide more insight into how schools operate as structurally violent institutions for families of children with disabilities—despite affluence or other privileges. They also show that parents may contend with opposition from multiple social institutions and potentially exorbitant financial costs when challenging school restraint and seclusion practices.

Discussion

While research indicates that parents may remove their children from punitive schools in response to excessive out-of-school suspension, to our knowledge, no study has investigated how parents of Black and white children with disabilities respond to harmful restraint and seclusion practices—another stigmatizing and consequential category of school punishment. Findings in this article suggest white parents from middle-class and affluent backgrounds were more likely to hire disability and legal professionals as a primary strategy to challenge restraint and seclusion practices in court proceedings. While white families from low socioeconomic backgrounds also sought remedies through due process and court proceedings, they were more likely to initiate complaints with CPS or withdraw their children from a school as a primary strategy. In contrast, Black parents were more likely to withdraw their children from school in response to harmful restraint and seclusion practices. Although all the Black parents in our study withdrew their children from school and enrolled them in institutions outside of their initial district, five Black parents utilized other strategies before withdrawing their children. Those strategies included scheduling meetings with the principal, contacting law enforcement, and filing a due process complaint. Our findings are consistent with parent activism literature, which demonstrates how social class, cultural capital, and perceptions of school as a hostile institution influence parent involvement (Allen & Smith, 2018; Brantley, 2023; Vincent, 2001).

The findings in this article also illuminate how the absence of federal oversight on restraint and seclusion in school settings, coupled with weak enforcement of state laws, shifts the burden of protecting children to parents (State of Illinois, 2021). Collectively, parents' accounts demonstrate that schools are powerful institutions, and the cost of challenging restraint and seclusion practices could exceed many families' annual household income. As schools have historically required court intervention to correct wrongdoing, the findings in this article suggest policymakers should consider mandating income-based legal services for parents. The presence of income-based legal resources could deter schools from using harmful restraint and seclusion practices and offer parents a less burdensome remedy. Without such interventions and federal oversight, schools will continue to use restraint and seclusion in ways that harm children, and parents will have limited recourse.

In cases where families could afford to hire legal representation, disability advocates, home tutors, and replace special education services, parents reported that school officials attempted to conceal their use of restraint and seclusion, mislead parents, and silence parents' efforts. When those strategies failed to deter parents from challenging the school's use of restraint and seclusion, parents' remarks implied that school officials filed false claims with CPS—weaponizing another state institution to harm families of children with disabilities. Consequently, mandating income-based legal services alone may not protect families of children with disabilities from the harmful effects of restraint and seclusion. Therefore, in addition to mandating income-based legal services, we suggest that state and federal policymakers implement the provisions proposed in the Keeping All Students Safe Act, which include:

1. Banning the use of physical restraint and seclusion unless there is an emergency and imminent threat of physical injury that cannot be resolved with less restrictive strategies.
2. Discontinuation of restraint and seclusion when the imminent threat to physical injury ends
3. Face-to-face monitoring when school officials restrain or seclude students
4. Mandating that restraint and seclusion be implemented by trained and certified school officials
5. Notifying parents verbally or electronically the same day school staff restrain or seclude a student, and provide written notification within twenty-four hours
6. Imposing restrictions against writing restraint and seclusion into a student's individualized education plan (IEP) and behavior plan.

We suggest that political enforcement of a ban, coupled with income-based legal services for parents, is the best strategy to protect families.

While several studies have conceptualized schools as structurally violent institutions, most limit their focus to racial minorities (Dumas, 2014; Hammarén, 2022; Wun, 2018). Though early studies framed school punishment and special education as mutually exclusive pathways for students, the findings in this article show how Black and white students who receive special education services experience criminalization in school. Within the school criminalization literature, Shedd (2015) describes how Black youth are subjected to a universal carceral apparatus via the constant surveillance they endure in school and mainstream society.

In this article, we demonstrate how students with disabilities and their families endure similar criminalization via the threat of a CPS investigation. Several scholars have criticized CPS for its deception, disproportionate focus on racial minorities, and harmful conduct (Fong, 2020; Roberts, 2022). Fong (2020) argues that CPS masquerades as an institution capable of providing therapeutic support and coercive intervention, which allows other state institutions, such as schools, healthcare, and law enforcement, to generate surveillance of families beyond common standards. She continues by stating, "Yet even as allegations in most cases are [unsubstantiated], the possibility of family separation engenders acute fears among mothers, and the active involvement of reporting systems strains relationships between families and the service providers reporting them" (p. 611). Fong's remarks remind us that schools initially sought to prevent students with disabilities from being educated in the same setting as their non-disabled counterparts (Mayes, 2023). Federal intervention via IDEA was required for students with disabilities to integrate into public schools (IDEA, 2004). Considering the historical context that shapes students with disabilities' integration in public schools, Fong's comments suggest that school officials use CPS as a tactic to convince parents to remove their children from public schools when their continued use of restraint and seclusion fails to achieve this goal.

While this study advances our understanding of the financial and social challenges associated with challenging school seclusion and restraint practices, there are important limitations. First, parents whose children had positive experiences with seclusion and restraint were not likely to respond to flyers or other recruitment strategies. Second, several Black mothers from low-income backgrounds refused to participate in this study. In early discussions, they expressed feeling powerless and embarrassed because they lacked the resources to relocate or challenge the schools' use of restraint and seclusion in court proceedings. Although these parents did not participate in our study, they possess valuable experiences that are missing from our analysis. Third, students with other learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, were not included in our sample. Though learning disabilities are the most common disability diagnosis, it is plausible that school officials treat students differently based on their label, and students with dyslexia may be less likely to experience restraint or seclusion. Lastly, our study did not include Asian or Latino/a families because data from the U.S. Department of Education indicates they are the least likely to experience restraint or seclusion (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). It is plausible that our recruitment strategies did not reach those populations. Intersectional data would provide insight into how Latino/a and Asian families avoid disproportionate restraint and seclusion, and if school officials utilize different tactics to punish students in those racial groups.

Future work should explore the prevalence of free and income-based disability advocates and legal representation throughout the U.S. Considering the tremendous financial burden parents described in this study, scholars should be aware of programs that alleviate this hardship. With this information, researchers could determine how the availability of free or income-based resources influences the distribution of restraint and seclusion in nearby public schools. Studies should also investigate the effectiveness of restraint and seclusion bans. While some states restrict the use of restraint and seclusion, the absence of strict monitoring and data collection mandates has hindered compliance (Clasen-Kelly, 2024; Platt & Perera, 2024).

The data underlying this article cannot be shared publicly because the researchers agreed to use all reasonable efforts to keep each participant's identity confidential. Releasing the recorded interviews could lead to reidentification and jeopardize their child's education. The data will be shared upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.