The Costs of Preschool Inclusion

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the instructional costs of inclusive and traditional noninclusive special education services for preschool children with disabilities. Cost information was collected from five local education agencies in different parts of the country that provided inclusive and traditional special education service options. Within-agency comparisons suggested that inclusive models were generally less expensive or comparable in cost to traditional forms of special education. Cost features, such as salaries, childcare tuition, equipment, materials, transportation, administration, and building costs were associated differently with different models. The difficulty in collecting cost information on noninstructional costs, the relatively mild degree of disabilities of children in the study, and potentially different groups of children enrolled in inclusive and traditional models were noted as limitations of this study.