Corrected: An earlier version of this story misnamed the federal law governing special education. The correct name is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Definition of special education
Special education encompasses the programs which serve students with mental, physical, emotional, and behavioral disabilities. The major law governing special education is the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees a “free appropriate public education” to children with disabilities and mandates that, to the “maximum extent appropriate,” they be educated with their nondisabled peers in the “least restrictive environment.” Read more.
How many students are in special education?
In the U.S. overall, 14.4 percent of all students were special education students (ages 3-21) in 2019-20. Data from the previous year shows that the percentage varied by state from 9.8 percent in Texas to 19.5 percent in New York.
Share of special education students by state
See the percent of special education students by state in the map below:
Has the number of students served in special education increased?
Yes. In the past decade, the number of students with disabilities has grown from just under 6.5 million, or 13.1 percent of all students in 2009-10, to almost 7.3 million, or 14.4 percent in 2019-20.
Special education statistics by race
While overall, 14.4 percent of public school students were served by IDEA in 2019-20, that number varies by race and ethnicity.
- White students – 14.7% served under IDEA
- Black students – 16.6%
- Hispanic students – 13.8%
- Asian students – 7.1%
- Pacific Islander students – 11.2%
- American Indian/Alaska Native students – 18.3%
- Two or more race students – 15.4%
Are schools overidentifying minority students with disabilities?
Federal law requires that states monitor their districts for overidentifying students with disabilities. Several studies have found that minority students are actually being underidentified for disabilities.
But some new studies are uncovering more nuanced findings, suggesting that minority students are overidentified in some contexts, and underidentified in others. Read more.
What are the demographics of special education teachers?
Although research has shown that students often do better in school when they have a teacher of the same race, just over 83.5 percent of special education high school teachers in public schools are white, higher than the teaching population as a whole, according to the most recent data available. But only about half of all students receiving special education services are white, according to 2017-18 data.
Read more about efforts to prepare, recruit, and retain special education teachers of color.
A majority of special education students—64.8 percent of those ages 6-21—spend 80 percent or more of their time in regular education classes, according to 2019 data. That number has more than doubled in recent decades. In 1989, only 31.7 percent of students spent 80 percent or more of their time in regular classes.
Getting students with disabilities into general education classrooms is not a silver bullet, researchers say. Read more to learn what else needs to happen to raise academic outcomes for students with disabilities.
Learning disabilities statistics
The specific learning disabilities category is the most common one covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act – in 2019-20, 33 percent of students with disabilities had specific learning disabilities.
Eleven percent of all students with disabilities have been diagnosed with autism alone, according to 2019-20 data.
Which disability categories have grown the most?
In the past decade, the number of students with disabilities as a percentage of total enrollment has increased a small amount, from 13.1 percent in 2009-10 to 14.4 percent in 2019-20. The mix of disabilities those students have, however, have changed dramatically.
The percent of students with disabilities who had a specific learning disability, like dyslexia, decreased from 37.5 percent to 33 percent in 2019-20. And the percent of students with disabilities with autism almost doubled, from 5.8 percent to 11 percent.
How much money is spent on special education by the federal government?
In fiscal year 2018, the federal government earmarked $12.3 billion for the education of children ages 3-12 with disabilities. That’s only about 15 percent of the excess cost of educating students with disabilities, compared with the cost of educating a general education student. The federal government under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act set a goal to pay states up to 40 percent of the excess cost – it never reached that goal.
What is the student-teacher ratio for special education students?
In 2016, there were 17.1 special education students for each special education teacher in the United States. That’s higher than the overall student-teacher ratio of 16.2 students per teacher.
Over the past decade the number of special education teachers has decreased by 17 percent, while the number of special education students only dropped by 1 percent. Read more about how that plays out on the school level.
For more information on special education, check out our Special Education topics page.
How to Cite This Article
Riser-Kositsky, M. (2019, December 17). Special Education: Definition, Statistics, and Trends. Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/special-education-definition-statistics-and-trends/2019/12