The
National Center for Education Statistics has released the 2009 edition of its Digest of Education Statistics. If you are interested in education and you enjoy numbers, this is the real deal. You can read the entire 732 page document
here.
Here are some observations:
Of all
special education students out of high school up to six years, 35.6% are living independently; 63.2% are currently employed; and 57% have received some
postsecondary education. (Table 390).
In school year 2007-2008, 6.6 Million students aged 3 to 21 were in special education, which amounts to 13.4% of the student population. Table 52 includes this information as well as the stats for each school year from 1990-1991 to 2007-2008. Also Table 52 includes the numbers for each state.
In the fall of 2007, 15.4% of special ed students spent more than 60% of their time in the regular education classroom; 22.4% spent between 15 and 60%, and another 56.8% spent part of their day in regular education but less than 21%. (Table 51)
Table 110 has information about exiting special education. Table 166 has
data regarding the compulsory attendance ages for all students and special education by state. Table 231 has stats concerning the distribution of post-secondary students by disability status and other characteristics.
There is a lot more. Many of the stats are broken down by state and many other variables. These are just some of the interesting numbers. I encourage you to review the report yourself. Despite my protests, numbers can be fun. Please tell me if you find any interesting numbers.
