ABSTRACT
Youth with disabilities have a diffi cult time completing high school. The Offi ce of Special Education’s (OSEP) Annual Report (2006), using district reported data, shows that for the 2001-02 school year, 373,407 students age 14 to 21 exited school. For this group of exiting youth, 61% left as school completers (51% left with a standard or non-standard diploma and 10% exited with a certifi cate) while 21% left as offi cial dropouts and 16% having “moved but not known to have continued” in school. This latter category, as suggested in an earlier OSEP Annual Report (U.S. Department of Education, 1987), likely represents a large proportion of school dropouts. The completion rate (diploma or certifi cate) varies by disability from a high of 78% for youth with hearing impairments to a low of 38% for youth with emotional/behavior disorders (EBD). These data, an illustration of impact, suggest that about 450 youth with disabilities exit as “offi cial” dropouts each school day and others who leave under “unknown” circumstances would raise this total. On a positive note, the overall rate, using data from the annual reports, shows improvement of nearly 15% since the 1993-2004 school year. The rate, however, remains well below the national completion rate of 89%, including via the General Education Development (GED) program, among 18-24-year-olds (Cataldi, Laird, & KewalRamani, 2009).
