Why consider mediation?

Mediation has many benefits for parents, educators and service providers, including:

• Families can maintain an ongoing and positive relationship with the school system and benefit from partnering with educators or service providers in developing their child’s program.
• Conflicts that arise out of misunderstandings or lack of shared information can be resolved through mediators helping parents, educators, and service providers to communicate directly with one another.
• Special education issues are complex and can best be solved by working together.
• Mediation tends to be faster and less costly than adversarial approaches, such as due process hearings and court proceedings.
• Mediation results in agreements that participants find satisfactory because they create the document, and research shows that people tend to follow the terms of their mediated agreements.
• Parties retain control over the process and don’t give control of the outcome to a third party such as a judge or a due process hearing officer.