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This article was featured in New York\u2019s One Great Story<\/a> newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Last winter, as her anxiety reached a new zenith, 7-year-old Hayley would often stop on Eighth Avenue in Park Slope and lie down on the sidewalk, staging a full-body protest against attending second grade at her zoned public school.<\/a> \u201cI\u2019m not going,\u201d she would wail, red-faced and sweating. \u201cI hate it. I hate you! You can\u2019t make me!\u201d Instead of a ten-minute walk to school, negotiations could last up to two hours with her mother, Diana, alternating incentives with threats. At night, after bedtime, Hayley often lay in bed crying and clutching her stuffed sloth with the lights off for hours. (Diana and Hayley\u2019s names have been changed to protect their privacy.)<\/p>\n Hayley is a sensitive, imaginative child who gives some of her allowance money to the food pantry. Cognitive tests have shown that she has a high IQ but also that she struggles with reading and spelling. Her kindergarten teacher chalked this up to COVID-era learning loss \u2014 Hayley had turned 3 in March 2020, so she\u2019d missed part of 3K and attended pre-K part time in a mask. \u201cBut then she got into first grade, and things were really not clicking,\u201d says Diana, \u201cand the teacher was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, because I can tell that she understands the ideas, but none of it is showing up in her written work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Diana wanted me to know, first and foremost, that she is a huge proponent of public school. Her older daughter is on the autism spectrum and in a public school. She has family members in the city who taught in public schools. She was even elected co-chair of the school-leadership team at Hayley\u2019s public school, a group of staff and parents with input on decision-making from curriculum to budget. She tells me all of this right away because, she says, she doesn\u2019t want me to get the wrong idea about her. \u201cI believe that public education has an enormous, innate value,\u201d she tells me. But, she admits, it didn\u2019t work for her younger child.<\/p>\n And so, like tens of thousands of other families in New York City, she has hired a lawyer and is filing a \u201cdue process\u201d claim against the Department of Education. These lawsuits are referred to as Carter cases, following a 1993 Supreme Court case that gave parents nationwide the same recourse. If the city settles, or the family wins in a hearing, the DoE will be liable for the cost of services, transportation, evaluations, and\/or tuition at a specialized private school. In Hayley\u2019s case, the payment will include an annual tuition of nearly $90,000. <\/strong>The city may also be required to pay the parents\u2019 legal fees \u2014 typically in the four- or five-figure range \u2014 incurred to file the suit each year.<\/p>\n Although parents across the United States can sue their school districts for private-school tuition, no one is as likely to opt for this route as a New Yorker. The rate of claims per student in New York State is ten times higher than the national average. In the 2023\u201324 school year, according to federal data, New York State represented nearly 70 percent of all special-education due-process claims filed in the United States \u2014 and in 2021, 98 percent of these cases came from New York City.\u00a0According to New York\u2019s Independent Budget Office, the city\u2019s total spending on these cases has more than quadrupled in a decade, from $234 million in 2015 to $1.1 billion in 2025. For 2027, the city has budgeted approximately $1.5 billion<\/a> for private-school tuition, private services, student transportation, and lawyer costs. That\u2019s about 4 percent of the city\u2019s entire education budget.<\/p>\n There is no single explanation for why New York City has so many of these cases. One factor is that under New York State law, but not in other states, not only can you enroll in a specialized special-education private school and sue the city for tuition, but you can also enroll in a regular private or parochial school and sue the city for outside special-education tutoring and therapy that the private school doesn\u2019t offer.\u00a0But the experts I interviewed, including Christina Foti<\/a>, the city\u2019s deputy chancellor in the Division of Inclusive and Accessible Learning, also gave a systemic rationale.<\/p>\n Over the past decade, New York City has grown what you might consider a Carter-case industrial complex with an unusually dense geographic concentration of high-end, specialized private schools; tutors; therapists; educational lawyers; advocates; and evaluators who all know and recommend each other and who help families navigate the system. \u201cThere\u2019s an entire economic infrastructure around due process,\u201d says Foti. \u201cThat ecosystem has included inflated costs.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the private schools that parents use DoE money to pay for could be considered luxurious with facilities, faculty, and curricula that rival those of the city\u2019s elite nonspecialized private schools like Dalton and Trinity \u2014 and with even higher tuition. An incomplete list of private special-education schools where many or most students use due process to pay tuition includes Winston Prep, which has daily one-on-one remediation and where students have gone on\u00a0backpacking and canoeing trips ($75,000 per year); Churchill, where elementary-school students study printmaking, ceramics, and fashion design ($79,000 per year); the Windward School, where eighth-graders recently enjoyed a private talkback<\/a> with the cast of The Outsiders on Broadway ($79,600); the Gateway School, which has Singapore math and a team of on-staff therapists ($80,500); Mary McDowell Friends School<\/a>, a Quaker school that sends all of its tenth-graders to Europe for a week ($90,000 a year); the Lang School, which has a makerspace and offers each student at least 30 minutes of formal counseling with a school psychologist each week ($104,800); and the IDEAL School, which, for $176,912 per year, pairs students who need it with a full-time one-on-one teacher.<\/p>\n Although the DoE pays many students\u2019 tuition at these schools, their student bodies do not reflect the diversity of the public-school system. Last school year, 71 percent of children who won private-school-tuition payments from the city were white; by contrast, just 12.5 percent of all students with disabilities in the city\u2019s public schools are white. And according to the conservative Manhattan Institute, in 2021, the Upper West Side recorded approximately 14.8 Carter cases per 1,000 students, while the entirety of Queens averaged fewer than one case per 1,000 students.<\/p>\n Mayor Eric Adams\u2019s first school chancellor, David Banks, said in 2022 that Carter-case families had figured out how to \u201cgame this system\u201d and blamed them for education-budget shortfalls that made it harder to fund other services. Parents of Carter-case kids, including Diana, told me that they feel vilified. They counter that their children are suffering in public school and losing out on critical instructional time, which could ultimately prevent them from earning high-school diplomas. They say egregious system failures have left them with no other choice.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Supreme Court decision that established this process, Florence County School District Four v. Carter, the Court held that families are entitled to tuition reimbursement for a private school of the parent\u2019s choice if a three-part test is met: First, did the district fail to offer a free, appropriate public education (or FAPE, for short)? Second, is the private school the parent chose an appropriate setting for this child? The third test, \u201cequitable considerations,\u201d was explained to me by special-education lawyers as, essentially: Did the family cooperate and act reasonably during the process? For example, did they show up to the meetings required to approve the child\u2019s Individualized Education Plan? Did they make a good-faith effort to check out the public school that was offered?<\/p>\n The seeds of Hayley\u2019s lawsuit were planted when her public school was slow to diagnose her learning disabilities. A teacher at Hayley\u2019s school told Diana that the city would likely not test for dyslexia until the end of second grade, even though Hayley was displaying clear symptoms earlier, and suggested that Diana hire a private tutor to help instead. \u201cShe told me she would get in trouble for saying this, but she was like, \u2018Something\u2019s up,\u2019\u201d Diana told me.<\/p>\n Advocates for Children of New York is a nonprofit that, among its other services, provides pro-bono legal representation in due-process cases to working-class children. Randi Levine<\/a>, its policy director, told me that in her experience, the Department of Education has at times discouraged its public-school teachers from using the term \u201cdyslexia\u201d with parents. \u201cWe hear stories of families who are requesting help, who are being told, \u2018Give it more time, give it more time,\u2019\u201d she says. Within the special-education world, this tendency is known as \u201cwait to fail\u201d and its tentacles can be far reaching. Levine shared stories of high-school juniors and seniors contacting her organization directly for help because they had never fully learned to read and had also never been evaluated for a learning disability. \u201cWe help them get an evaluation, and they\u2019re diagnosed with dyslexia, and their IQ scores show that they absolutely have the ability to learn to read; they just haven\u2019t been taught in an effective way,\u201d she says. When I mentioned this to Foti, she claimed the city screens all students from kindergarten through ninth grade for risk of dyslexia three times a year.<\/p>\n And to be sure, the percentage of kids in New York City public schools who are being flagged for special education has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic and is higher than the national average. But advocates say there are still many children who need help and aren\u2019t getting identified. Levine said spotting dyslexia, the most common learning disability, can take even longer for students whose first language is not English (150 languages are spoken inside New York City public schools). The city\u2019s response is that they are prioritizing hiring bilingual evaluators.<\/p>\n Diana and her husband hired a private tutor for Hayley, just as her teacher recommended. It cost them $150 for an hour once a week, and it helped: Hayley\u2019s reading reached grade level by the end of first grade. But the gains were short lived. Soon after second grade began, her academic struggles \u2014 now present in both reading and math \u2014 returned, and school refusal took root. In an in-person meeting with her elementary school\u2019s principal, Diana verbally requested a formal evaluation for learning disabilities, but the evaluation was never scheduled. She escalated the situation through every channel she could think of: She spoke up at an SLT meeting, she called the district families services coordinator, then the superintendent.<\/p>\n Eventually, Hayley got off the wait list for a private neuropsychological exam, arranged without the DoE\u2019s involvement, which cost her parents $6,500. In May 2025, Hayley was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia (a math disability), social pragmatic communication disorder, and ADHD. Finally, Diana thought, we have the documentation we need to get an Individualized Education Plan. But it wasn\u2019t until a full year later that her public elementary school scheduled an IEP meeting to determine what services Hayley would get. The DoE is considered at fault if an IEP meeting doesn\u2019t happen within 60 days of the initial written request.<\/p>\n Diana says her decision to hire a lawyer and tour private schools was spurred largely by the neuropsychologist who evaluated Hayley. He advised her that the DoE might not have an appropriate placement for her daughter\u2019s combination of serious learning disabilities and high IQ. \u201cShe\u2019s going to be with kids who are not her intellectual peers. Like, there are nonverbal kids in those classrooms,\u201d Diana told me as she described her understanding of the city\u2019s offerings. The neuropsychologist provided her with a list of special-education lawyers so she could start a due-process claim.<\/p>\n Winning a Carter case can take months to years. First, a family needs to obtain either an IEP or an outside evaluation to establish the student\u2019s specialized needs. Then they have to find a spot in a private school \u2014 a lengthy process that can involve written responses, interviews, tours, and testing, plus application fees. And then, once admitted, they have to pay the tuition while simultaneously hiring a lawyer to fight for their reimbursement, which, some parents say, can take years to come through. A typical financial investment for legal fees is $7,000 for a case that settles and more if a hearing is required. For lower-income families, there\u2019s yet another variant of Carter cases, called Connors funding, which means the DoE pays the tuition to the school directly. But if a family requesting Connors funding ultimately loses their case, the school will have to tap its own financial-aid funds to cover the child, and they may not be willing to do that. There are ways around the legal fees, too, but they are limited, and you have to be in the know: In addition to Advocates for Children, the nonprofits Legal Aid and Brooklyn Defenders take on some of these cases pro bono as do some private attorneys.<\/p>\n Special-education law is a growing practice specialty in New York. Ask any parent in the throes of the process, and they\u2019ll tell you the top firms: SkyerLaw<\/a> in Brooklyn Heights, which has about\u00a020 attorneys on staff, and Neal Rosenberg<\/a>, downtown, <\/strong>which has around 16. Attorneys I\u00a0interviewed said that in addition to these two powerhouses, there are more than two dozen attorneys in solo or small group practices. They also told me that most cases they take on are winnable. \u201cWe lose pretty infrequently,\u201d says attorney Jennifer Ratcliff<\/a>. Marc Gottlieb<\/a>, another education attorney, told me he\u2019s lost just two or three cases out of about 1,500. In around half of his cases, he says, he finds a procedural error \u2014 a bright-line, open-and-shut mistake by the city, like not calling an IEP meeting or not offering a child any seat in a classroom at all.<\/p>\n This is at least partially because, despite being the largest public-school district in the country, and spending more per student than anywhere else, the city frequently fails to offer FAPE. There are shortages, especially post-COVID, both in specialized staff and in the settings that a diverse student body needs. Last year, the city\u2019s teachers union reported 1,400 unfilled positions for paraprofessionals, the teachers\u2019 aides who provide crucial behavioral and academic support and who have a starting salary of just $34,000. A bill to give them a raise is trudging through the City Council.<\/p>\n The Nest, Horizon, and AIMS programs \u2014 small public-school classes designed for students with autism \u2014 are oversubscribed. In addition, more than a third of preschoolers with IEPs are not getting all of their legally mandated services, <\/strong>according to DoE testimony before the City Council from March 2026.<\/a> Levine says she has seen cases of medically fragile students where \u201cthe student cannot be in school safely without a nurse, and so the child has just been sitting at home.\u201d Foti told me the DoE has recently hired hundreds of additional paraeducators. Earlier this month, the mayor\u2019s office also announced that two new District 75 schools will open this fall in Queens and the Bronx<\/a>. (District 75 is the city\u2019s public-school district devoted solely to special education.)<\/p>\n When second grade ended and Hayley still didn\u2019t have an IEP, Diana decided to apply to a specialized private school in Brooklyn. It has small classes, and every teacher on the faculty is trained in special education. The school\u2019s website states that most families file due-process cases to cover tuition.<\/p>\n Hayley\u2019s parents waited until the middle of the summer to apply, hoping that the IEP process would go through and public school would work out. By the time Haley received her acceptance, it was almost the end of August \u2014 and the new school year was weeks away.\u00a0Her parents rushed to file the proper paperwork \u2014 called a \u201cten-day notice\u201d \u2014 to get a due-process claim for tuition reimbursement rolling. \u201cMany offices were not willing to take our case, not because the case wasn\u2019t winnable but because of the timeline for them,\u201d Diana says.<\/p>\n Hiring an attorney is a nonnegotiable aspect of the Carter-case process, but even in \u201cslam dunk\u201d scenarios there is risk involved for the family paying the retainer. Diana hired a solo practitioner who seemed compassionate and responsive and frequently represented other families at the school. But after she paid his $5,500 retainer, he stopped responding to her calls and emails. \u201cHe just kind of, like, disappeared,\u201d she told me. Other clients of this lawyer told me they had similar experiences; they had paid hefty legal fees they couldn\u2019t afford and now might never get back.<\/p>\n Diana was reeling, but she scrambled and hired a second lawyer for $8,000. The school granted the family $25,000 in financial aid; Diana paid the rest of the bill by taking money out of Hayley\u2019s college fund and charging credit cards. She and her husband are hopeful that their case will be settled and they\u2019ll eventually get all of their money back. And after an incredible third-grade year, she says she is willing to do whatever it takes to keep Hayley at her new school long term. \u201cI was very skeptical of the whole system until we got here, and now I\u2019m like, No, thank God this is here,\u201d says Diana. \u201cIt\u2019s like night and day \u2026 She\u2019s so happy to go to school, she\u2019s so proud of her work, she\u2019s really learning. She\u2019s excited to do her homework.\u201d<\/p>\n Their daughter\u2019s mental-health relief, she adds, is as important as her academic progress. Research shows <\/strong>three in ten students with learning disabilities have co-occurring mental-health issues including depression and anxiety, which can show up as school refusal just as it did for Hayley. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s really remarkable how much her life has changed because of this school,\u201d Diana told me. \u201cSorry, I\u2019m crying.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Over the past 20 years, New York\u2019s mayors have taken contrasting approaches toward Carter cases. Michael Bloomberg hired a fleet of city lawyers to try to fight parents\u2019 claims. Bill de Blasio went in the opposite direction; he sought to make it easier<\/a> for parents to navigate the reimbursement process, encouraging the DoE to settle more readily. Foti told me that it was at this point \u2014 around 2014 \u2014 that the influx of due-process claims started to become a deluge. Eric Adams, himself dyslexic, vowed to serve students better within the public-school system, including by opening two small specialized public schools dedicated to dyslexia and improving reading instruction for all students. In his executive-budget proposal released on May 12, Zohran Mamdani said he plans to reduce due-process cases and save $149 million by expanding public special-education programs and improving program management.<\/p>\n \u201cDue process needs to be in place when public schools are not the right option \u2014 it\u2019s an important safeguard that should always be in place,\u201d explained Foti. But she also acknowledged its most fundamental problem: \u201cWe cannot build an inclusive public-school system through litigation.\u201d Foti says the path forward is not to stand in the way of anyone\u2019s due-process rights but to offer better options within the system and build families\u2019 trust. Whatever the plan, it will likely have to transpire as overall public-school enrollment continues its decline. And each year, more than a billion dollars will continue to flow to private schools and providers able to optimize the educational experience for some of the city\u2019s more privileged families.<\/p>\n Due process is essentially a triage system, one with profound built-in inequities. It functions as a safety valve almost exclusively for the in-the-know and well-resourced parents who find it \u2014 and whose exit from the public-school system lessens the active parental pressure on changing and improving it. \u201cWhat we want is for the New York City public-school system to provide an excellent education for every student, including every student with a disability,\u201d says Levine. Every time we file a due-process request, it\u2019s a failure. It means that the New York City public-school system has not provided a student what they need.\u201d She told me it pains her that Advocates for Children can represent only a small percentage of low-income students who would benefit from private-school instruction.<\/p>\n The inequity troubles some parents, too. For Damien, whose son is attending a specialized private school after three years in public school, it is top of mind. He grew up in New York and excelled in its public schools despite having dyslexia.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m an immigrant \u2014 we figure it out,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n His wife, Sara (also not her real name), by contrast, grew up in Manhattan, attended private school, and benefited from private speech therapy as a child. Raising their son, Stephen, has been a practice in mixing their backgrounds and values. They moved to Windsor Terrace specifically because they wanted to enroll him in a diverse, well-regarded public elementary school. Soon after, when Stephen\u2019s progress in reading stalled, his teacher told them he would catch up and just needed more time. Unwilling to wait, they brought on a private tutor twice a week and met with a neuropsychologist, who diagnosed Stephen with dyslexia in August just before second grade. Stephen finally got an IEP halfway through that school year. The school offered to move him into an ICT classroom \u2014 one that mixed general-education and special-education students. He made little progress.<\/p>\n Sara felt \u201cgaslit\u201d by the school\u2019s faculty, who kept telling her that Stephen was doing fine. Damien saw it differently: \u201cMy feeling wasn\u2019t: This bad school failed my son. It was: This really good school couldn\u2019t help him to do this thing.\u201d Stephen\u2019s reading tutor advised them to\u00a0consider private school and referred them to a lawyer to start the Carter-case process. Their lawyer, in turn, advised them on how to pass the three-pronged test for due process. He told them not to ask for amendments to the IEP. If you want to win a due-process case, you need to show that the public school is failing to meet your child\u2019s needs, and altering the services to better suit your child could negate that. They were also advised to stop working with Stephen\u2019s private tutor to ensure he didn\u2019t make too much progress. But Sara couldn\u2019t bear to do that.\u00a0\u201cIt was horrible to send him to school every day knowing he was going to fail,\u201d says Sara.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, they started touring specialized private schools. When they received a spot at the one they liked best, their lawyer told them to keep the news a secret. If word got out at school, it would damage the third prong of the Carter-case test: \u201cequitable considerations.\u201d Applying to private school amid an IEP process could be viewed by the DoE as not working in good faith to improve Stephen\u2019s experience at his public school.<\/p>\n This past fall, Stephen started third grade at a private school in Manhattan for kids with specific learning disabilities and he is thriving. He\u2019s making friends, progressing in reading, and always shooting his hand up in class. \u201cThere\u2019s no question in my mind that this was a life-changing, transformational decision for him and that he\u2019s in the right place,\u201d says Sara.<\/p>\n Damien and Sara told me they make a good, if variable, income, but they have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from family to pay for their son\u2019s education: about $200 per week for tutoring sessions, $20,000 (so far) in attorney fees, $7,500 for Stephen\u2019s first neuropsych exam, $1,500 for his assessment for due process, and $75,000 for tuition. They expect to be paying for fourth grade before third grade is reimbursed. If they lose their case for reimbursement \u2014 they expect a verdict in a few weeks \u2014 they can\u2019t realistically afford to keep him at the school after that. Even with that risk, says Sara, \u201cIt 100 percent feels worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n But Damien is still conflicted and parsing through layers of guilt. \u201cI\u2019ve given him my kid Blackness, I\u2019ve given him dyslexia, I\u2019ve given him hard stuff, and my white wife gets to give him all the access and resources because she knows how to navigate this system,\u201d he says. \u201cThat felt really disempowering. Going through a court case also felt weird because the legal system wasn\u2019t made for bodies like mine.\u201d He told me he also feels guilty when he thinks of all of Stephen\u2019s classmates with dyslexia whom they left behind at his public school. Sara says all of the families in Stephen\u2019s class at his new, predominantly white school are suing the DoE. \u201cIncluding multimillionaires,\u201d she adds. \u201cAnd winning.\u201d<\/p>\n