The Effects of Special Education on the Academic Performance of Students with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

In the 40‐plus years since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, special education has grown in the number of students and amount spent on services. Despite this growth, academic performance of students with disabilities remains troublingly low compared to general education students. To some extent, these differences reflect persistent underlying disabilities, but they also may reflect ineffective services. Does special education improve academic outcomes for students with disabilities? There is surprisingly little evidence to guide policy and answer this question. This paper provides an answer for the largest disability group, students with specific learning disabilities (LDs), using rich New York City public school data. Because the majority of LDs are classified after school entry, we observe outcomes before and after classification, allowing us to estimate impacts using within‐student pre/post comparisons (student fixed effects) and an intent‐to‐treat specification. We find that academic outcomes improve for LDs following classification into special education and impacts are largest for those entering special education in earlier grades. Attendance, however, shows little change after classification. Results are robust to alternative specifications and falsification tests bolster confidence in a causal interpretation. Differences in impacts by gender, race/ethnicity, grade of classification, and settings illuminate possible mechanisms.

Estimating returns to special education: combining machine learning and text analysis to address confounding

“…Students who receive counseling seem to fare better academically in comparison to those who do not receive any intervention but who exhibit similar difficulties and characteristics. This effect is four times the 0.1 standard deviation effect size criterion for successful interventions suggested by Bloom et al (2006) and Schwartz, Hopkins, and Stiefel (2021). Academic support offers no benefits but does not harm either.…”

“…3 Despite the increasing number of students with SEN and the push to implement inclusive education, evidence on how special education (SpEd) placements -and inclusive placements in particular -affect academic and labor market returns of students with SEN is scarce. Existing research shows inconclusive effects of SpEd on academic performance (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, 2002;Lavy and Schlosser, 2005;Keslair, Maurin, and McNally, 2012;Schwartz, Hopkins, and Stiefel, 2021) and on educational attainment (Ballis and Heath, forthcoming). Since early interventions in children's school curricula have a profound impact on children's academic and lifelong prospects (see among others Cappelen et al, 2020;Heckman, Pinto, and Savelyev, 2013;Duncan and Magnuson, 2013;Chetty et al, 2011;Heckman et al, 2010), it is crucial to provide teachers, parents, psychologists and policy makers with insights on which SpEd programs are effective.…”

“…Given that SpEd is usually a multifaceted intervention with programs that differ in quality and intensity, these studies fail to provide insights into the effectiveness of different types of programs. 5 Studies have shown moderate effectiveness of SpEd programs on the academic performance of SEN students (Schwartz, Hopkins, and Stiefel, 2021;Keslair, Maurin, and McNally, 2012;Harrison et al, 2013;Lavy and Schlosser, 2005) 6 and positive returns for SEN students with learning and/or emotional disabilities (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, 2002). In addition, evidence on long-term effects of SpEd placements is scant: while Ballis and Heath (forthcoming) find that students experience long-run benefits from SpEd placements, other studies report long-term negative impacts of SpEd.…”

Are Inclusive Education or Special Education Programs More Likely to Result in Inclusion Post-School?

“…While at school, it is important to assess the development of academic skills, especially literacy and numeracy, social skills, such as relating to others, and daily living skills. Recent studies have shown that special education interventions can be effective in meeting the needs of children with learning or behavioral difficulties in order to help them develop academic skills [9,10], whereas Wilcox [11] reports on several studies which found that students in inclusive classrooms made less academic progress than those who received specialized interventions. In another review, Gilmour [5] reported on a study which found that a special education intervention was more effective than inclusive education in improving the mathematics skills of children with learning difficulties.…”

35 Years on the Road from Research to Practice: A Review of Studies on Four Content Enhancement Routines for Inclusive Subject‐Area Classes, Part II

“…In three of these studies, the performance data collected from the students were disaggregated to display the performance of students with LD along with the performance of the whole group of students. The performance of students with LD was highlighted since this group of students has been shown to exhibit substantial skill deficits and to earn failing or barely passing grades in subject‐area courses (Fore et al., 2008; Hughes & Schumaker, 1991; Schwartz et al., 2021a; Warner et al., 1980). These studies and the results associated with each of the four Content Enhancement Routines are described below.…”