Educating every teacher, every year: the public schools and parents of children with ADHD

This article reports findings from interviews with 20 parents about their experiences in obtaining services for their ADHD children in school systems. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze data at both individual and organizational levels. Parents saw school personnel as varying widely in their knowledge about ADHD and their acceptance of its associated problems. At the individual level, parents felt that they had to educate a succession of different school personnel each year. At the organizational level, they had to work actively to obtain continuity of services for their children from year to year and school to school, but for most parents, this outcome was desired more often than realized. On the whole, parents perceived schools as having failed to respond adequately to their children's educational needs.