| Allison Gruner
Harvard University
Inclusion: What is the impact on students without disabilities?
FINAL REPORT:
The three articles that comprise this dissertation focus on inclusion-the education of students with disabilities in regular education classrooms alongside nondisabled peers. Using a nationally representative dataset, I explore the multiple defining characteristics of inclusive classrooms, and how these characteristics mediate the impact that inclusion has on reading achievement for nondisabled students in the 3rd grade.
In the first article, I provide a comparative analysis of students who are educated in inclusive versus non-inclusive classrooms. Key findings include the fact that students in inclusive classrooms are more likely to have an aide in their classroom, and they are also more likely to have a teacher who consults often with a special education teacher. These data also show that students in inclusive classrooms are more likely to have classmates who are White and have relatively high levels of socioeconomic status, yet they are also more likely to have classmates who are reading below grade level, providing some evidence that inclusive classrooms are often synonymous with Òlow-trackÓ classes.
The second article uses cluster analysis to determine how students with disabilities are distributed in inclusive classrooms. I find that over 60 percent of inclusive classrooms include students with disabilities in proportions that closely mirror their proportions in the overall population of students with disabilities. The remaining 40 percent of the classrooms fall into one of 6 groups, or Òclusters,Ó each with one disability type dominating.
In the third and final article, I examine the relationship between inclusion and a nondisabled student's achievement in reading. I find that, controlling for background variables, inclusion makes no difference on a nondisabled student's achievement in reading, with a few exceptions. In particular, I find that for nondisabled students who are educated in classes containing students with autism or emotional disturbance, those who have an aide in their classroom outperform their peers in classes without an aide, as well as students in non-inclusive classrooms. For those who are educated in classes containing students with disabilities related to language and learning, students perform better when their teacher collaborates more frequently with a special education teacher.
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