Academic Achievement of Students in Special Education in a Socially Inclusive School

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which students with disabilities achieved academic growth in a school setting that emphasizes the importance of all students becoming full members of the classroom and school communities. The participants were 22 students who were students in the school's Special Education program for at least four years. As its basis for assessing academic growth, the study examined the reading and mathematics percentile rankings of Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments conducted in the students' first and last years of enrollment in the school's Special Education program. The study found that nearly all students showed percentile growth in both reading and mathematics assessments, that the growth was independent of gender or the number of years in the school's Special Education program, and that students achieved, on average, higher than 50th percentile results on nationally-normed assessments of reading and mathematics.