The Costs of Preschool Inclusion

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the instructional costs of inclusive and traditional noninclusive special education services for preschool children with disabilities. Cost information was collected from five local education agencies in different parts of the country that provided inclusive and traditional special education service options. Within-agency comparisons suggested that inclusive models were generally less expensive or comparable in cost to traditional forms of special education. Cost features, such as salaries, childcare tuition, equipment, materials, transportation, administration, and building costs were associated differently with different models. The difficulty in collecting cost information on noninstructional costs, the relatively mild degree of disabilities of children in the study, and potentially different groups of children enrolled in inclusive and traditional models were noted as limitations of this study.

Voices of American and Israeli Early Childhood Educators on Inclusion

“…The cost benefit discourse reflects a capitalistic economic paradigm for evaluating the feasibility of inclusion. While on the larger scale, it might be argued that inclusion costs less than separate education in actual expense (Odom, Hanson, Lieber, Marquart, Sandall, Wolery & Chambers, 2001), the teachers' and school administration's disposition to weigh the costs and benefits precludes a human rights approach. Such an orientation would set aside these considerations in favor of the overriding values and visions of a just society.…”

Secondary School Inclusion Rates: The Relationship Between the Training and Beliefs of School Site Principals and the Implementation of Inclusion

“…In another study, Odom et al (2001) examined the instructional costs of inclusive and traditional non-inclusive special education services for preschool children with disabilities. The researchers utilized three different surveys of 16 preschool programs to collect information on the cost of teaching students in the classroom (instructional costs).…”

“…The results of Odom et al (2001) indicated that teachers' salaries were the largest expense in all of the programs. When the cost to the LEA was used as the basis of comparison, the inclusive settings were less expensive to run than the traditional service models.…”

Childcare usage among Canadian preschoolers with early observable differences

“…Growing amounts of research stemmed out of the concept of inclusion and questions regarding the benefits and drawbacks of inclusion were soon being studied. Undoubtedly, research has shown that inclusive settings provided benefits to both children with EOD and children without EOD (Bruder, & Brand, 1995;Stahmer, & Carter, 2005;Stahmer, Carter, Baker, & Miwa, 2003) and that, at least in the school setting, inclusive settings were equivalent in cost or less expensive to run when compared to specialized, segregated environments (Odom et al, 2001).…”