TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hanushek,Eric A.
AU  - Kain,John F.
AU  - Rivkin,Steven G.
TI  - Does Special Education Raise Academic Achievement for Students with     Disabilities?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6690
PY  - 1998
Y2  - August 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6690
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6690.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Eric A. Hanushek
Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305-6010
Tel: 650/736-0942
Fax: 650/723-1687
E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu

John Kain
Director
Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Scienc
Mail Station GC21
P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX  75083-0688
Tel: 972-883-2555
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased

Steven G. Rivkin
Department of Economics
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144
Chicago, IL 60607
Tel: 312.413.2368
E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu
AB  - While special education has become a hotly debated issue of school policy, most of the discussion has centered on the aggregate costs of providing mandated programs for disabled children.  Little attention has been paid to the effectiveness of such programs or possible interactions with the provision of regular education.  This study, building on the unique data of the Harvard/UTD Texas Schools Project provides direct evidence on the effectiveness of special education programs.  The average special education program boosts mathematics and reading achievement of special education students, particularly those classified as learning disabled, while not detracting from regular education students.  These results are estimated quite precisely from models of fixed effects in achievement gains, and they are robust to a series of specification tests.  At this stage, it is not possible to judge whether the program benefits are sufficiently large to justify the added spending involved.
ER  -