Parents’ Expectations for Children with Disabilities

November 18, 2013

UW–Madison education professor Bonnie Doren finds that parents’ expectations for their children with disabilities varies by family income and by the adolescent’s particular disability, ethnicity or race, and gender. Her recent study found that parents of minority adolescents had lower expectations than parents of nonminority adolescents that their child “definitely will get a paying job after school.” Parents from lower-income backgrounds had lower expectations than parents from higher-income backgrounds that their child “definitely will graduate from high school with a standard diploma,” “definitely will get a paying job after school,” or “definitely will enroll in postsecondary school.” Parents of adolescents with a learning disability (LD) had higher expectations than parents of adolescents with intellectual disability (ID)  or emotional disturbance (ED) that their child “definitely will graduate from high school with a standard diploma.”  More information is available here