Recently, a political campaign used a photograph of students from our school while speaking broadly about public education. It made me think about how often children who learn differently are included in the imagery of educational conversations while being left out of the policies and funding conversations themselves.
The students at The Highlands School do not “look” different.
They look like kids.
They are bright, funny, creative, athletic, kind, and capable. You would not walk past them at the grocery store and immediately know they have dyslexia, language-based learning differences, or executive functioning challenges.
That’s part of the problem.
Because when a child does not visibly struggle, people often miss how hard school has become for them.
By the time many students arrive at Highlands, they are exhausted. Some have spent years trying to hide their difficulties. Some became class clowns. Some developed anxiety. Some simply stopped believing they were smart.
Their parents did what parents do. They attended meetings. They advocated. They hired tutors. They paid for evaluations. They tried intervention after intervention. And many watched their child slowly lose confidence anyway.
Then came the difficult decision so many families never expected to make: paying for a school where their child could finally learn.
That’s the part of the school choice conversation people often miss.
For many families, this is not about politics or ideology. It is not about privilege or exclusivity.
It is about a child finally reading fluently.
It is about a student no longer crying before school.
It is about watching confidence come back after years of feeling defeated.
Families like ours already support public education through their taxes. Then pay again out of pocket for specialized education because their child needs something different.
Meanwhile, schools like The Highlands School receive virtually no government funding despite serving students with diagnosed learning differences and executive functioning challenges. We survive because families sacrifice, donors give generously, and communities step in where systems often do not.
These families are not asking for special treatment.
They are asking to be seen.
When we talk about “every child,” we must include children who learn differently. Not just in photographs or campaign slogans, but in educational policies and funding decisions that affect real families every single day.
Because children who struggle to learn still deserve the chance to thrive.