Children in Special Education

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago educational services for children with disabilities were frequently fragmented, underfunded, highly segregated, and unreliable. Public schools were often ill prepared and unwilling to provide special and necessary services to children with disabilities. Over the past two decades, efforts to provide an appropriate education for children with disabilities in America—through a series of state statutes, federal court cases, and federal laws—have led to the development of a large special education system to address the needs of these children. This journal issue focuses on the development of that special education system and examines its components, its strengths and weaknesses, and the areas in which improvement is needed. This Child Indicators article examines some of the key federal statistics on the provision of special education services for children with disabilities. Statistics have played a part in shaping special education policy. A highlight of congressional hearings in the 1970s was the finding that 2.5 million children with disabilities in this country were not receiving an education appropriate to their needs, while almost 2 million others were receiving no education at all. 1 As described by Martin and Martin in this journal issue, congressional response to such statistical evidence of underservice of the disabled included passage of Public Law 94‐142, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, which required that all students with disabilities receive a free public education appropriately tailored to their individual needs. A key element of this statute and its successors was that federal funding be provided to states for special education services based on state reports of the number of students with disabilities receiving special education and related services. This and other aspects of federal legislation have fostered the development of a data collection system to monitor the provision of special education services to disabled students by local and state educational agencies.