Date of Award

6-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Abstract

Students with learning differences in independent secondary schools navigate accommodation systems their schools are not legally required to provide — without the institutional protections available to peers in public school settings. Unlike public schools, independent schools without federal funding are not required to implement IEPs or honor Section 504 plans. Within this legal non-mandate, accommodation provision varies widely, and student experiences navigating these environments remain largely undocumented.

This qualitative study centered the accounts of seven independent school alumni primarily in California, who received accommodations for diagnosed Specific Learning Disabilities or ADHD in mainstream classroom settings. Informed by Disability Studies in Education and Disability Critical Race Theory and analyzed through a reflexive thematic framework, the study asked: what are the experiences of students with accommodations for learning differences in independent secondary schools, and how do those experiences shape students' sense of self, their frameworks for understanding their own capacity, and their notions of success?

Analysis produced five themes: navigational agency, self-advocacy, adult variables, identity framing, and redefining success. Across themes, an emergent construct — Values Scaffolding — describes how a parent's philosophical orientation toward their child's learning difference scaffolds the student's self-advocacy capacity, disability identity, and success frameworks over time. Findings suggest comprehensive accommodation provision is a matter of institutional choice, and that resources enabling successful navigation are distributed by the same inequities shaping educational access more broadly.

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