Disabled peers and academic achievement
Education Finance and Policy, 2010
Recommended citation: Hickey, Ross, Jane Friesen and Brian Krauth (2010). "Disabled peers and academic achievement." Education Finance and Policy. 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1162/EDFP_a_00003
We use data on students in grades 4–7 in the Canadian province of British Columbia to investigate the effect of having disabled peers on value-added exam outcomes. Longitudinal data for multiple cohorts of students are used together with school-by-grade-level fixed effects to account for endogenous selection into schools. Our estimates suggest that same-grade peers with learning and behavioral disabilities have an adverse effect on the test score gains of nondisabled students in British Columbia. However, these effects are statistically insignificant and are sufficiently small that they are unlikely to raise concerns about the placement of this group of disabled students. The effect of peers with other disabilities is also small and statistically insignificant but varies in sign.
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