Why is mediation often preferable to a due-process hearing in a school dispute?

A special-education due process hearing is an adversarial, trial-like proceeding that can be expensive, slow, and damaging to the working relationship between a family and a school that will continue to educate the child for years. Mediation, by contrast, is faster, is provided at no cost under IDEA, and keeps the parties in control of the outcome rather than leaving it to a hearing officer. Because the family and the school have a continuing relationship centered on the same child, a mediated agreement that both sides helped craft is far more likely to be implemented cooperatively than an order imposed after a contested hearing. Mediation also remains available even while a complaint or hearing request is pending.