One of the strange things about education is that we spend billions of dollars on programs when we have little evidence if they’re helping kids or not. Special education -- the extra services that students with disabilities get -- is case in point. It’s been around for 45 years, seven million kids are in it and we spend an estimated $90 billion a year on it. A new study out of New York City takes advantage of detailed data on when students were diagnosed with specific learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, and compared their academic performance pre and post treatment. It finds a rather modest benefit for special education.  

The study, “The Effects of Special Education on the Academic Performance of Students with Learning Disabilities,” was published in January 2021 in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

• In math and reading, special education services closed about one-sixth of the achievement gap between students with learning disabilities and general education students. 
• Asian students with learning disabilities made the largest academic gains from special ed services 
• Black students with learning disabilities, on average, had the smallest gains after receiving special ed services. 

• The researchers looked into how the services were delivered to each student but weren’t able to draw conclusions as to whether some approaches (pull out, ICT or separate classrooms) are more effective than others.  

• There was no way to discern from this administrative data exactly which intervention programs educators were using or how many hours of extra services each student received. 

Schwartz, A.E., Hopkins, B.G. and Stiefel, L. (2021), The Effects of Special Education on the Academic Performance of Students with Learning Disabilities. J. Pol. Anal. Manage.  

Hanushek, E. A., Kain, J. F., & Rivkin, S. G. (2002). Inferring program effects for special populations: Does special education raise achievement for students with disabilities? Review of Economics and Statistics, 84, 584–599.  

Hurwitz, S., Brea, P., Cohen, E. D., & Skiba, R. (2019). Special education and individualized academic growth: A longitudinal assessment of outcomes for students with disabilities. American Educational Research Journal, 20, 1–36. 

Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Cook, M., Strassfeld, N. M., Hillemeier, M. M., Pun, W. H., & Schussler, D. L. (2017). Are Black children disproportionately overrepresented in special education? A best-evidence synthesis. Exceptional Children, 83, 181–198. 

Morgan PL, Woods AD, Wang Y, Hillemeier MM, Farkas G, Mitchell C. Are Schools in the U.S. South Using Special Education to Segregate Students by Race? Exceptional Children. 2020;86(3):255-275. doi:10.1177/0014402919868486 

School Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education Identification, Todd E. Elder, David N. Figlio, Scott A. Imberman, Claudia L. Persico, NBER Working Paper No. 25829, Issued in May 2019 

Cooc, N. (2018). Examining the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in special education: New trends from California school districts. Exceptionality, 26, 1–19.