Test score disparities between ever-SPED and never-SPED students grew from under 0.4 standard deviations in kindergarten to 0.9 standard deviations in 4th grade¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2026: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? The achievement gap between ever-SPED and never-SPED students widened from under 0.4 SD in kindergarten to 0.9 SD in 4th grade. → Angela Johnson 2021
Evidence¶
Angela Johnson 2021¶
Angela Johnson, Elizabeth Barker. (2021). Understanding differential growth during school years and summers for students in special education. NWEA Research Working Paper. https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/understanding-differential-growth-during-school-years-and-summers-for-students-in-special-education-paper/
q2 · i? · associational · r2
Across the five-year follow-up of the 4,228-student cohort, the study reports the disparity between the two groups "grow from under 0.4 standard deviations in kindergarten to 0.9 standard deviations in 4th grade", driven by differential summer loss. The article prints these gap magnitudes as descriptive values, not as an effect size for a treatment contrast, so no standardized effect size is coded.
"This led the test score disparities between the two to grow from under 0.4 standard deviations in kindergarten to 0.9 standard deviations in 4th grade"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Ever-SPED students grew more than never-SPED students during the 1st and 2nd grade school years in math and the 1st, 3rd, and 4th grade school years in reading — related
- Ever-SPED students lost more learning than never-SPED students during every summer from kindergarten through 4th grade — related
- Ever-SPED students started kindergarten with lower math and reading scores and grew less than never-SPED students during the kindergarten school year — related
- Steeper summer learning losses for students with disabilities contribute to widening disparities with peers — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
sped-score-gap-grows-04-to-09-sd |
title |
Test score disparities between ever-SPED and never-SPED students grew from under 0.4 standard deviations in kindergarten to 0.9 standard deviations in 4th grade |
description |
Test score disparities between ever-SPED and never-SPED students grew from under 0.4 standard deviations in kindergarten to 0.9 standard deviations in 4th grade |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2021 |
recheck_by |
2026 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-08 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — angela-johnson-2021 |
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