Fuchs’ view challenges hundreds of studies that have consistently shown that inclusive educational environments have substantial benefits for the cognitive and social development of children with disabilities. That research helped persuade lawmakers to increase funding to help schools accommodate students with disabilities, in some cases hiring additional special education teachers for each grade. According to the most recent data, approximately 15% of students in U.S. public schools have been diagnosed with a disability and are receiving services. This debate over special education placement therefore affects not only the academic prospects of students with disabilities, but also the cost and structure of the program. the entire education system.
The document entitled “Reframing the most important policy debate on special education in fifty years: How against Or to Educate Students with Disabilities in American Schools,” was co-authored by Allison Gilmour, special education researcher at the American Institutes for Research, and Jeanne Wanzek, professor of special education at Vanderbilt. Fuchs provided me with a pre-publication draft and gave me permission to discuss it with other experts.
The heart of Fuchs’s critique is that previous researchers have failed to distinguish between students with disabilities sent to separate special education classes and students with disabilities included in general education classes. They are fundamentally different. Children who are placed in segregated settings for a significant part or most of the day tend to have more severe disabilities and academic difficulties. It should surprise no one that high-achieving students with milder disabilities end up with higher test scores than students who initially had lower test scores and more severe disabilities. This does not prove that a child with a disability learns more in a general education classroom. Ideally, from a research perspective, you would want to randomly assign students with disabilities to the two types of classrooms and see where they learn more. But it is unethical and impractical.
Researchers call this problem “selection bias” and have attempted to overcome it using statistical techniques. For example, they compared students with disabilities who had similar demographic characteristics, such as the same race or ethnicity, similar family income, and the same type of disability. Inclusion always comes first. However, Fuchs points out that many of these studies still have not taken into account the two most important factors: the student’s academic performance before the disability diagnosis and the severity of the disability.
Starting in the late 1980s, the federal government began collecting data on these two important and confounding factors – academic achievement before diagnosis and severity of disability – so that policymakers could see how well students were doing in accordance with the 1975 federal law that requires support for the education of students. disabled. Fuchs and his co-authors reviewed a 1991 analysis of this data, called the National Longitudinal Transition Study, and noted that it initially indicated that high school students with disabilities learned more when they learned alongside their high school peers. general education. But the report’s appendix reveals that the benefit of special education inclusion disappears when academic gains are adjusted for students’ prior academic achievement and measures of functional skills. Fuchs said there was no difference in results between the two settings when researchers compared students who started with the same test scores and had the same disability severity.
Some recent, statistically sophisticated studies still show that inclusion prevails. For example, in two studies of Indiana students with disabilities published in 2021 and 2023, researchers found that the more time students spent in an inclusive setting, the better they did. However, Fuchs and his co-authors pointed out that more than half of the students were excluded from the 2021 study due to missing data and research design. They say the studies only compared the two extremes: students who spent 80 percent or more of the time in general education and 80 percent or more of the time in separate classes, which represented a very small group of students (only 75 in mathematics and 63 percent in mathematics). in English Language Arts). Even with statistical adjustments for prior academic achievement, it is difficult to equate these two groups. Fuchs and his co-authors concluded that the validity of both studies is “problematic.”
This isn’t the first time Fuchs has questioned the gospel that inclusion is the best solution. In an article published 30 years ago, Fuchs criticized the wisdom of always educating children with disabilities in general education classrooms. In 2023, Fuchs published a study showing that even states with the highest special education inclusion rates were not seeing consistent improvement in test scores for children with disabilities. Scores declined in some states.
Fuchs and colleagues’ harsh critiques of the strength of the evidence for inclusion are controversial, but they are not alone. In December 2022, the Campbell Collaboration, a highly respected international nonprofit that reviews research evidence for public policy purposes, also concluded that the benefits of inclusion were inconsistent and inconclusive. Campbell’s reviewers rejected 99 percent of the 2,000 studies they found due to poor research quality and design, for reasons similar to those described by Fuchs. Only 15 studies survived. They found that math and reading scores, as well as psychological, emotional, and behavioral measures, were no higher for children with disabilities who learned in general education classrooms, on average, than for children who were learning in separate special education classes. Advocates for children with disabilities have disputed these findings.
Lynn Newman, a researcher at SRI, a California-based research organization, has worked on multi-year studies of students with disabilities for the federal government. She said Fuchs’ paper made good points, but she added that his argument also had some “holes” because it excluded some well-designed studies on more recent data, in which inclusion appears to be beneficial, in particularly among disabled high school students. .
Newman told me there was very little support for students with disabilities in general education classrooms in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, inclusion has improved, she said. She cited four studies (one, two, three, four), published between 2009 and 2021, showing that students fared better when it came to inclusion.
I showed this research to Fuchs, who agreed that the methodology and quality were good, but he noted that these studies did not analyze whether students learned more in one location over another. Instead, studies have focused on other outcomes like employment after high school. “The articles Newman identified are barking up a different tree,” he said by email.
Fuchs focuses on academic achievement. He admits there may be other psychological or social benefits to learning alongside peers in general education classrooms. He didn’t study them. But these benefits could be even more important for parents and their successful lives. (Fuchs also did not review the evidence for how non-disabled students are affected by their disabled peers in their classes. That is a different body of research.)
It is difficult to measure the academic achievement of students with disabilities. Students with disabilities are more likely to fail a general education course. Scores between the two contexts – special education and general education – cannot be directly compared. Test scores are often lacking, particularly before and after changes in special education placements.
Other academics I spoke to said Fuchs lumped all disabilities together. Two experts on children with the most severe disabilities who need significant support showed me recent studies that point to superior learning when these students are included in the general classroom, even if they rarely are. However, these students represent only 1 percent of the student population with disabilities.
In many ways, this debate shows how science responds to changing conditions. Decades ago, there weren’t many ways to help children with disabilities. Today, there is a growing body of research on the best ways to teach children, especially young elementary school children, who are struggling with reading and math. Some of these interventions require daily instruction outside of general education classrooms.
Fuchs doesn’t think his argument will lead to the segregation of all children with disabilities into self-contained classrooms. He envisions schools where students would be pulled out of the general education classroom daily to receive the reading and math instruction they need in a separate classroom. Some children with mild dyslexia, he said, might only need an hour a day of intensive reading instruction. Meanwhile, some high-functioning children with Down syndrome may be able to remain in the regular general education classroom during reading time.
And just as the quality of separate and special education is evolving, so is the quality of inclusion in a general education classroom. Schools are improving in their ability to support and accommodate students with disabilities. Obviously, a good version of inclusion will outperform a bad version of a separate class. And a good version of intense, specialized teaching will outperform a bad version of an inclusive classroom where the general education teacher is overwhelmed and lacks training. Too often, students do not receive the support they need.
School leaders find themselves in a difficult situation when they must decide whether to invest in improving the general classroom to accommodate everyone or create and refine interventions outside of the classroom. And right now, research can’t really tell them what works best.
