The associations among classroom quality, classroom percentage of children with special needs, and child outcome measures were tested in low- and high-quality classrooms using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). No main effect on child outcomes for the classroom concentration of children with special needs was observed. However, an interaction between classroom quality and the percentage of children in the classroom who had special needs was found. A high-quality classroom environment serving no children with special needs was associated with more favorable classroom mean scores on social behaviors for typically developing children. Inversely, the combination of high-quality classroom environment and more than 20% children with special needs was associated with more problem behaviors and lower scores in print concepts for typical children.
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