The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information. EdWorkingPaper No. 26-1447

Overview & Synopsis

What political and administrative resources contribute to the realization of rights in the United States? We examine this puzzle in the context of rights to education for students with disabilities by measuring the administrative ease of accessing local special education information: the extent to which governments actively reduce learning costs and make information accessible. To measure administrative ease for special education information, we develop a novel web crawler that approximates the human experience of navigating school district websites and apply it to public school districts in four states. The crawler measures whether special education information is present, how long it takes to find the information, the length of the navigational pathway, and what terminology districts use to describe services. We use these measures in an assessment of administrative ease, finding wide variation across districts and states. We find that over 80 percent of districts provide at least one page referencing special education, however, the pathway complexity, search time, and terminology differ substantially. Situating these patterns within a political market framework, we show how supply-side capacity and demand-side pressures jointly contribute to the accessibility of rights-relevant information. We conclude by discussing implications for the design of administrative systems that support the realization of rights beyond education.