7 Red Flags That Signal Your Special Education Advocate Might Be Hurting, Not Helping

An Inside Guide to Avoiding Advocates Who Create More Problems Than Solutions

Choosing the wrong special education advocate can do more harm than good.

Having spent years as a special education administrator, I've seen the devastating impact of poor advocacy. Some advocates create unnecessary conflict, drain parents' resources, and damage crucial relationships with school teams—all while claiming to help. Even worse, they often leave families more dependent on their services rather than empowering parents to advocate independently.

Today we'll explore:

• 7 critical red flags that signal an advocate might harm your advocacy journey

• Practical alternatives to common advocacy pitfalls

• Action steps to protect your family and child's interests

Let's decode what makes an advocate ineffective - and potentially harmful to your child's educational journey.

If you're evaluating potential advocates or questioning whether your current advocate is truly serving your family's best interests, here are the resources you need to make an informed decision:

Weekly Resource List:

• 7 Ways to Identify a Strong Special Education Advocate - If you didn’t read Wednesday’s newsletter, it is the prequel to today’s discussion

• The EMPOWER Framework for Advocacy - A systematic approach to evaluating advocacy support

• Effective Communication Strategies - Templates and scripts for working with school teams

7 Red Flags to Avoid When Choosing a Special Education Advocate

To secure appropriate services while maintaining productive relationships with your child's educational team, you need to carefully evaluate potential advocates.

Let's explore the warning signs that indicate an advocate might create more problems than solutions:

1. Lacks Objective Judgment

A problematic advocate agrees with everything you say without providing balanced perspective. Here's what to watch for:

• Automatically supports all of your requests without analyzing their appropriateness. Is afraid to say no to you in fear that they will lose your business. That is not child-centered, that is paycheck-centered.

• Cannot or will not explain the reasoning behind their recommendations. “Trust me, this always works.” If you hear those words, run. They may understand how to bulldoze a meeting with intimidation tactics, but that is not improving outcomes for your child in the long run.

Warning Sign: During initial consultations, they don't ask probing questions or challenge any of your assumptions.

2. Emotional Rather Than Strategic

While empathy is important, an advocate who operates primarily on emotions may not serve your child's best interests. Here's what to watch for:

• Uses emotional arguments instead of data and legal standards. If you go into a meeting with emotional arguments, you inherently have to spend more time explaining your thinking. It is much harder to argue with “look at this chart” than “but I feel like he needs more services.” Your advocate should prioritize efficiency so that time can be focused on actually providing services to your child.

• Cannot separate personal feelings from professional judgment. If you leave a meeting more upset than when you entered, take a quick look at why. If it was because your advocate escalated things and got you riled up, they are taking advantage of your emotions. An escalated meeting increases the likelihood of more frequent meetings, which boosts their bottom line.

Warning Sign: Their case strategy relies more on how unfair things are than on specific legal rights or evidence-based needs.

3. Poor Time Management

Inefficient advocates can cost you both time and money while achieving less. Here's what to watch for:

• Regularly extends meetings without clear purpose or outcomes. You should not have part 2, part 3, part 4 IEP meetings. If there was an absence or a time restraint, maybe a part 2. Every additional meeting just increases the amount of time your child is going without an update to goals and services.

• Fails to prepare adequately for IEP meetings or follow up on action items. This disrespects everyone’s time. If your advocate’s tactic is to stall to frustrate the school team, that is both immature and counter-productive. Whose time are they actually wasting? Your child’s.

Warning Sign: They struggle to keep meetings on track and focused, sometimes escalating something that was never an issue to begin with.

4. Lacks Strategic Priorities

An advocate who fights every issue equally doesn't understand strategic advocacy. Here's what to watch for:

• Treats all concerns as emergencies requiring immediate action. They need to help you prioritize your concerns. When you treat everything as an emergency, people are less likely to respond with urgency at an actual emergency. Talk to The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

• Unable to help prioritize which issues are worth pursuing. Unfiltered honesty here: if you have been wronged by your school team and you are building a case to file, there are issues that will get you a win and there are issues that will get you nowhere. An advocate that can understand how an adjudicating law judge (ALJ) thinks and acts will be able to steer you in the right direction.

Warning Sign: They encourage filing complaints or taking legal action over minor issues that could be resolved through collaboration.

5. Adversarial Approach

Creating unnecessary conflict can damage relationships and hinder progress. Here's what to watch for:

• Immediately takes an aggressive stance with school teams. Even if the school team is in the wrong, an aggressive approach immediately puts people on the defense, while a compassionate approach encourages open communication.

• Uses "us versus them" language when discussing school staff. I will repeat my north star here: There are no sides in education. There is only one “side” and that is the side of the child. Full stop.

Warning Sign: They speak negatively about school personnel during your first meeting, before even engaging with the team.

6. Creates Dependency

Quality advocates work to empower parents, not create permanent dependence. Here's what to watch for:

• Discourages parents from learning to advocate independently. “Don’t worry about taking that course, I already know that information—I can help you.” Remember, an advocate’s goal should be to help parents gain independence in being able to advocate for themselves.

• Suggests their presence is always necessary for success. An advocate does not need to be at every meeting. Watch out for this tactic: If you don’t invite them to a meeting and they point out everything that “went wrong” or would have been better if they were there.

Warning Sign: They don't explain their strategies or teach you how to handle situations on your own.

7. Poor Professional Relationships

Strained relationships with school teams often indicate problematic advocacy approaches. Here's what to watch for:

• Known reputation for being difficult rather than effective. Ask school team members what they think of a certain advocate. If you ask me about some of the best advocates I’ve worked with, I will smile and say, “Oh I know her, we’ve been on a couple cases together.” If you ask me about someone who is not strong, I will say, “Sorry, I can’t give my personal opinion on outside professionals.”

• Pattern of broken professional relationships across multiple schools. Some parents tend to go for advocates that the district hates. They think they must be hated because they’re good and they cost the district money. Let’s assume that’s true. If a district is spending time and money fighting with your advocate, how is that impacting the time and money they could be spending on educating your child?

Warning Sign: School staff members seem visibly tense or defensive when their name is mentioned.

That's it.

Here's what you learned today:

• The most effective advocates empower parents rather than creating dependency

• Data-driven decisions and strategic thinking should guide advocacy efforts

• Maintaining collaborative relationships with school teams serves your child's best interests

Remember: The goal isn't to "win" against the school—it's to secure appropriate services while building productive partnerships that benefit your child.

Take Action: Download our "Special Education Advocate Interview Checklist" to evaluate potential advocates using these criteria. This practical tool helps you spot these red flags during initial consultations and make informed decisions about your advocacy support.

All the best,

Megan

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Looking for a particular resource? Shoot me an email and let me know and you may just see that resource included in next week’s newsletter.

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