The impact of special needs students on classmate performance

Does the presence of special needs students in regular schools affect the academic achievement of their classmates? I examine this question in the context of primary and secondary education in the Netherlands, where the per student budget for special needs students in regular schools is roughly twice the amount of the regular student budget. I use three independent identification approaches: student fixed effects models, school fixed effects models, and neighborhood variation. For both education levels and all three identification approaches, the estimates indicate that special needs students do not have a statistically significant effect on the academic achievement of their classmates. The estimates are precise enough to rule out even modest effects.