The Effect of Teacher’s Aides on Students with Special Needs

This study investigates the effect of increasing educational support in regular classrooms on students with special education needs (SEN). We exploit previous randomized controlled trials that added teacher’s aides to Danish grade 6 classrooms combined with rich register data informative about special education needs and school assignment. The teacher’s aides comprised three types: A co-teacher with a teaching degree, a teaching assistant without a teaching degree, and a coach. We find that the treatments resulted in 7-8 percentage points higher inclusion of SEN students in regular classrooms and that SEN students gained academically. Long-term follow-up data indicate that while the academic gains evaporated over time, the treated students were able to stay in regular classrooms throughout compulsory education and largely follow the same progression as their counterparts in the control group when they transited to upper secondary education. Finally, we show that the costs of the teacher’s aides are outweighed by the saved costs of special education.