Special education is the federally mandated service to disabled children from birth to age 21 under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This article is a collection of special education statistics.
This article draws on the Digest of Education Statistics 2005, published by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as part of the US Department of Education (USDOE).
Note that the years used are chosen to show change over time and to allow for comparable statistics in situations in which data collection changed over time.
The government tracks the types of disabilities of the children who are being served in each year. Since the first year for which records are given, there has been a dramatic change in the percentage of types of disability: