Special-ed helps students improve, says new study
- Joanne Jacobs
- Mar 31
- 1 min read
Fifty years after the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guaranteed extra help to students with disabilities, a new study finds that special education works, reports Matt Barnum on Chalkbeat. In three states, "access to special education services changed students’ academic trajectories for the better."
Researchers looked at test scores for students identified as needing special education in fourth through eighth grade in Connecticut, Indiana, and Massachusetts. Before the diagnosis, students were losing ground on reading and math tests, compared to classmates. Once they began receiving special-ed services, their scores began to rise.
The gains were “immediate, quite large, and sustained,” says lead author Marcus Winters, a professor at Boston University.
Access to accommodations, such as extra time on tests," is unlikely to explain the learning gains," writes Barnum. The study doesn't suggest which services are helping students improve.
"About 15 percent of public school students are in special education, a figure that has been ticking up in recent years," he writes.
It's not clear whether the gains from special education justify the much higher costs, said Ashley Jochim, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). It's possible "alternative strategies could produce even larger results," writes Barnum.
"While the expansion of special education has undoubtedly provided valuable support to some struggling students, millions of others remain underserved in general education classrooms, even as special education consumes ever larger shares of education budgets," a recent CRPE report stated.
Side note: I have to confirm that I am human every single time I post. Not sure why, but it is what it is. Occurred to me that one sign that I was human would be getting bored with the confirmation process and ceasing to comment. But then how would the system know? 😁
Glad to see things being studied, but to me the real questions revolve around "increasing numbers of students" and "the high cost of special ed services". Both legitimate problems. One thing I see is an increasing number of parents asking for services for their kids. To steal an old quotation, when everyone has a disability, then no one has a disability. I'm seeing that not only are regular classrooms getting squeezed financially, there is also a move to mainline special ed students, leading to a reduction in the amount of time a teacher has to spend with non-sped students. A para-educator can help but they are rarely trained educators, meaning that as a teacher, I have to keep telling…