Educating Children with Disabilities

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) and Center on Education Policy (CEP) has published Twenty-Five Years of Educating Children with Disabilities: The Good News and the Work Ahead, which highlights statistics showing the progress that has been made in educating children with disabilities during the past twenty-five years. These gains include access to public education, inclusion in regular schools and regular classrooms, services for children ages 0 to 2, improvement in high school graduation rates, increase in college attendance, higher employment rates than for older individuals who did not have the benefit of IDEA, and parent involvement.

It also points to some of the areas where improvement is needed, specifically:

• Students with disabilities are held to lower expectations academically.
  
• African American students are referred for special education services at higher rates than the overall population.
  
• Only 55% of students with disabilities leave high school with a diploma.
  
• Young people with disabilities are less likely to go to college or universities.
  
• Young people with disabilities are employed at a much lower rate than their counterparts.
  
• There is a shortage of special education teachers and regular education teachers do not feel prepared to address the needs of students with disabilities.
  
• Many students with disabilities do not have access to needed assistive technology. Also, students with disabilities do not have access to the Internet and other information technologies.

This report is available online (on the CEP website) at www.cep-dc.org/specialeducation/.

Center on Education Policy, 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 522, Washington DC 20036, 202.822.8065 (voice), 202.822.6008 (fax), www.cep-dc.org (website), cep-dc@cep-dc.org (e-mail)