- Two and a half million students — or about 5% of all students in public schools — are identified as having learning disabilities (LD) in 2009 and are eligible for assistance under IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
- In the last decade, the number of children identified as having LD in public schools has declined by 14%.
- Boys comprise almost 2/3 of the school-aged children with LD receiving special education services.
- The cost of educating students with LD is roughly 1.6 times the expenditure for general education students. This is dramatically less than the average cost of all students with disabilities, which runs 1.9 times the cost for general education students.
- In 2008, 62% of students with LD spent 80% or more of their school day in general education classes; in 2000, that figure was 40%.
- More students with LD are graduating with a regular high school diploma—64% in 2008, up from 52% a decade earlier.
- The high school dropout rate among students with LD was 22% in 2008, down from 40% in 1999.
- 35% of students with LD in general education classes used the general education curriculum without modification.
- Close to 1/2 of all students with LD test three grade levels behind non-disabled peers.
- Nearly 1/3 of youth with LD are suspended from school at some point due to behavior.
Data from The State of Learning Disabilities: Facts, Trends and Indicators,
produced by the National Center for Learning Disabilities, July 2011,
available on line at http://www.ncld.org.
