The Effects of Special Education Policies at Scale: Identification Disparities and Student Achievement

Nicholas Ainsworth

Policymakers have long worried about growing special education identification rates and sociodemographic disparities in who gets identified for services. Despite efforts to reduce potential misidentifications, questions remain about the extent of disability identification disparities in schools and how changing identification and intervention practices impacts students. My dissertation sheds light on these questions using unique administrative data and policy variation in two states. In chapter one of my dissertation, I use novel data linking Oregon's K-12 students to their family incomes contained in IRS tax records to show substantial income-based differences in how students are categorized for school-based disability supports, providing the first population-level evidence on how disability identification varies across the full income distribution. My second chapter provides the first causal evidence on the effectiveness of Response to Intervention (RTI) when implemented at scale. RTI, a federally supported instructional model used to target early academic interventions and identify specific learning disabilities, was gradually rolled out across Oregon districts starting in 2005. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that RTI reduced special education identification in adopting districts without sacrificing overall achievement, and improved achievement for some minoritized student groups. Finally, my third chapter uses a discontinuity in birthweight eligibility for early intervention services for infants and toddlers in North Carolina to test whether intervening early reduces later need for special education services and improves academic outcomes. Together, these studies provide new evidence on inequalities in disability identification and the policy solutions for reducing those inequalities to improve student outcomes at scale.

About Nicholas Ainsworth

Nicholas Ainsworth (Nick) is a Ph.D. candidate in Education at the University of California, Irvine specializing in Education Policy and Social Context. He studies the factors that shape children's opportunities and how policy can be used to improve their outcomes at scale. Most of his work focuses on PK-12 education policy and special education, though he is broadly interested in how education, health, and social policy interact to influence children's trajectories. To this end, Nick has published work on the impacts of poverty reduction efforts on children's short-term health outcomes as well as their long-term economic well-being. His ongoing work explores socioeconomic disparities in the receipt of educational supports such as special education and how different policy interventions shape who is identified for services and their subsequent educational outcomes. Before starting his Ph.D., Nick worked as a K-2 special education teacher in Title I schools in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received his M.Ed. in Special Education from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and his B.S. in Disability Studies and Political Science from Vanderbilt University.