| Amanda Sullivan
Arizona State University
Propensity Score Matching Analyses of the Effects of Early Childhood Special Education for Children with Developmental Delay or Disability
An increasing number of children nationwide are receiving early childhood special education services intended to minimize children's developmental delays, improve competencies, and remediate emerging educational disabilities. The proposed research seeks to examine effectiveness of early childhood special education services for children's preschool and kindergarten outcomes relative to closely matched peers not receiving services. This research is intended to address a gap in the literature on early child special education where understanding of the effectiveness of early childhood special education is predicated on small scale studies and the more general early childhood intervention literature. However, special education is distinct from general interventions for young children. Further, school-aged special education services have not been shown to have strong positive effects on children's academic or social-emotional outcomes; therefore, there is a need to examine the effectiveness of early childhood services through methodology that allows for the estimation of causal effects. Because children are legally entitled to services based on need, empirical analysis must address potential confounding variables through means other than random assignment to treatment. This study will utilize propensity score matching techniques to analyze data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, a nationally representative sample of U.S. children born in 2001. This research aims to indicate whether early childhood special education services have significant effects on functional outcomes, parent perceptions, classroom behaviors and later special education status, which is especially important given the purposes of services, increasing rates of identification, and evidence of the limited effectiveness of school-age services.
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