| George Farkas
Pennsylvania State University
What's special about special education? Modeling the determinants and consequences of special education placement using the ECLS-K
FINAL REPORT
This research project resulted in two research papers, estimating who is placed into special education, and the impacts of this placement. The first paper uses nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to estimate which variables, measured in the fall of kindergarten, predict special education placement by the spring of third grade. The most powerful predictor is academic ability at the time of school entry, measured by the average of the student's reading and mathematics test scores. Also important is the student's task engagement. Further, there is a Òfrog-pondÓ contextual effect - controlling for an array of students' individual and family characteristics, attending a high-performing school increases the student's chance of special education placement. With academic, behavior, and school context variables statistically controlled, there is no effect of social class background on placement. However, we find that boys have higher placement rates than girls, and African-American, Hispanic, and Asian students have lower placement rates than non-Hispanic whites.
The second paper sought to quantify the extent to which delivery of special education services positively impacted children's learning and behavior. Specifically, we examined whether children receiving special education services displayed (a) greater reading or mathematics skills, (b) greater task focused-behaviors, or (c) fewer externalizing or internalizing problem behaviors than closely matched peers who did not receive such services. To do so, we used propensity score matching techniques to analyze data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a large scale, nationally representative sample of U.S. schoolchildren. Collectively, results indicated that delivery of special education services has either a negative or null impact on most aspects of children's learning or behavior. However, special education services do yield a small, positive effect on disabled children's task-focused behaviors.
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