Federal special education law stipulates that all children in the United States are entitled to receive a free, appropriate, and public education, regardless of their disability. Yet, research consistently documents injustices in the law's implementation, including racial disproportionalities. In my dissertation, I interrogate how the law itself puts a great deal of responsibility onto parents for the law's implementation and how parents are differentially positioned to take on this work. Drawing on scholarship from multiple disciplines, my dissertation addresses the puzzle: Why do parents--not educators or school systems--bear the responsibility to understand and enforce special education policy? Under what conditions? And, with what consequences? I address these questions in separate three studies. Study 1 is an interview study with a racially and socioeconomically diverse group of 60 parents from across the US. In this study, I challenge the extant literature on special education policy implementation and enforcement by and reframing parents as policy actors, given the role parents play in monitoring and guiding special education policy implementation for their children. This study explores how parents described working as policy agents within special education and how parental resources shaped their experiences. I found that all parents described working to initiate, develop, and enforce their children's rights and that parents' economic, cultural, and social resources--as well as their access to whiteness--did shape parents' experiences navigating special education, though not always in straightforward ways. For example, while parents' with more social, cultural, and economic resources could access greater supports outside of their child's school districts, few parents in my sample believed their children had what they needed from their schools, regardless of background. In Study 2, I utilize the same interview sample to better understand the costs and burdens that parents experience as they work to monitor and enforce their child's rights within special education. I found that all parents experienced numerous costs; however, parents of color and white parents of children of color reported experiencing additional racialized burdens. I also found that the nature of the law--one that cuts across different aspects of society, including education, health care, and law--creates additional burdens for families as they often work alone in navigating all spaces for their child. In Study 3, I try to understand how this policy design developed by focusing on how parents' roles came to be and how, if at all, they have changed over time. I found that within federal law, parents' roles within the legislation were initially constructed in three ways: parents as targets, partners, and policy agents. These constructed roles have largely held over time and despite the concerns raised within Congressional hearings. Over time, Congress has made slight alternations to the construction of parents' roles, which has simultaneously acknowledged concerns raised and further instantiated parents' roles, especially as policy agents. By reframing parents as policy actors in special education, this dissertation helps illuminate how the design of the law is one mechanism that contributes to long-observed inequities within special education implementation. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]