| Jason Fletcher
Yale University
Examining the effects of full inclusion on the classmates of children with special needs
FINAL REPORT
This project examines the effects of moving toward full inclusion of individuals into regular education environments on the test scores of classmates of children with special needs. The inclusion of all students in regular education settings -- the "least restrictive environment" -- has been phrased in terms of the basic rights of all children to receive a good education. However, little is known regarding the potential effects of full inclusion on the classmates of the students with special needs. Since full inclusion has grown in popularity and a large fraction (50%+) of children in elementary schools have a classmate with special needs, beginning to evaluate the benefits and consequences of this policy should be a high priority for policy-makers, parents, educators, and the public. Since the potential effects of this policy likely depend on the disability of the included student, this project focuses on classmates of students with serious emotional problems, where the spillover effects on classmates would likely be greater than many other disabilities.
In order to examine this research question, this project uses the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort. The nationally representative and longitudinal nature of the data as well as the multiple sources of available information (e.g., students, parents, teachers, administrators, classmates) allow a rich conceptual framework to be employed. Due to the complexities of the process that places particular students together in classrooms, this project uses several methodologies to examine the robustness of the results, including OLS regression analysis, school or student level fixed effects, and matching estimation to uncover several important findings. First, students taught in a classroom with a classmate with an emotional problem are shown to perform worse on standardized tests in mathematics and reading. Second, students in schools that practice full inclusion rather than partial inclusion have larger reductions in test scores. Third, test scores decrease in a non-linear way as the number of classmates with emotional problems increases. Finally, results suggest larger reductions in test scores with exposure to classmates with emotional problems for students in low-income schools.
These results suggest that the policy of full inclusion of students will all types of disabilities into regular education classroom should be re-evaluated, with the benefits and costs both of the disabled children and the non-disabled children considered. Also important is the likelihood that the effects of inclusion differ by disability. This suggests that the policy of the inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education classrooms should be based on the disability. The results also suggest that additional resources should be targeted at classrooms that educate children with serious emotional problems to further dampen the effects of inclusion on their classmates.
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