The term “students with disabilities” encompasses well over 5 million U.S. students and more than a dozen disability categories. Research that disaggregates data by disability category has shown wide variation across these categories in terms of the students’ dropout and graduation rates.

While students with disabilities overall tend to drop out of high school at higher rates than their general education classmates, students with certain disabilities actually tend to stay in high school longer than four years — dropping out at relatively low rates but also not graduating on time.

Teasing apart these important variations is helping to build a knowledge base for more effectively targeting supports to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

 

*Published May 30, 2016.