Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Though middle school is widely regarded as emotionally and socially “challenging” for many students, students with disabilities (SWDs) may be particularly uncomfortable. As an example, Stiefel et al, 2018 find that SWDs are more likely to report problems with bullying and harassment at school than GEN peers and more likely to perceive that SWDs are excluded from school activities. Does it get better when these students move to high school? This paper examines the change in student reports regarding school environment, separately for SWDs and GENs. We then assess changes in the SWD-GEN gap, both within and between schools to shed light on whether (and how) high school is “better” for SWDs and their GEN peers.

We use longitudinal student level data for two cohorts of 7^th through 10^th grade students in New York City public schools for 2013-14 through 2017-18. These data include primary disability classification (e.g., Learning Disability, Speech Impairment) and service setting (e.g., self contained, collaborative, etc.), along with demographics and program variables (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, ELL and free/reduced price lunch status), academic outcomes, and school attended. Critically, these include responses to the annual New York City School Survey, which asks questions about school climate such as students’ perceptions of fellow students’ behavior and their feelings of safety on campus.

In a series of descriptive regression analyses, we explore the extent to which SWDs are more (or less) likely to report a positive school environment in high school (9^th and 10^th grade), compared first to their own middle school reports (7^th and 8^th) and then reports by their GEN peers. Controlling for demographics and a range of school and student fixed effects, we parse the within and between school (or student) variation. We explore heterogeneity by primary disability, gender, race/ethnicity, and school setting, exploiting the wide variation in high school types in NYC (i.e., STEM versus Humanities, small versus large). Finally, we assess changes following de-classification among SWDs.

In preliminary analyses, we find that while both GENs and SWDs report a more positive school climate in high school, the gain for GENs is larger. Thus the SWD-GEN divide widens. This research offers need guidance for targeting special education reforms, particularly regarding where and how to concentrate efforts to improve school climate for students with disabilities.