Parents' Rights in Special Education: The Readability of Procedural Safeguards

To make informed educational decisions, parents must be able to read and comprehend the information that is given to them by their school. The purpose of the current study was to examine the readability of Parents' Rights documents of all states. Results indicated that only 4% to 8% of Parents' Rights documents were written at the recommended reading level. To the contrary, 20% to 50% of the documents were written at a college reading level or higher, and other text characteristics may have added to their difficulty. These findings suggest that parents of students with special needs are likely to find Parents' Rights documents very difficult to read and understand. Parents' Rights documents should be rewritten to make them accessible to more parents.