Alunos de inclusão prejudicam seus colegas? Uma avaliação com dados em painel de alunos da rede municipal de São Paulo

The purpose of this study is to estimate the effect of People with Special Needs (PSN) on the cognitive performance of students without special needs. We use data from a panel of students gathered from Prova São Paulo. We estimate the effect of the presence of some PSN student in class on the math performance of regular students. Then we conducted a falsification/placebo test, which revealed the existence of a statistically significant effect related to the teacher who is confounded with the effect of the presence of students with special needs in the classroom. To remove this effect we carry on a "within" transformation of the data by the sequential subtraction of the average performance of each teacher and each school from the student performances. The estimated average effect with the transformed data show that regular students are not affected by the presence of PSN students in the classroom once teacher and school effects are removed. Only in the case of Disintegrative Disorder of Childhood - which is associated more to social behavior - we find a positive effect on the performance of regular students. Estimates by quantile regression for panel data with fixed effects suggest that in some quantiles there is harm to students that participate in inclusive classrooms with Autists and Rett Syndrome carriers, or with Multiple Defficiency and Mentally challenged people.