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1 Jul 2007
Brief

Demographic and School Characteristics of Students Receiving Special Education in the Elementary Grades

This Issue Brief examines the demographic and school characteristics of students receiving special education in the elementary school grades. Prior studies have documented the number of children receiving special education services in each year during the elementary school years by gender, race/ethnicity, and disability (see, e.g., Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) 2003). However, little is known about the grade distribution of students by other demographic and school characteristics (such as the student’s poverty status and the school’s control (private/public), urbanicity, region, and poverty concentration).

Data recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K) allow a study of the demographic and school characteristics of students receiving special education in several grades between kindergarten and grade 5. Through the ECLS-K, NCES has followed a nationally representative sample of school children since the 1998–99 school year, when the children were in kindergarten, through the 2003–04 school year, when most of the children were in fifth grade. Special education data were collected in spring 1999 (kindergarten), spring 2000 (first grade), spring 2002 (third grade), and spring 2004 (fifth grade).

At each time point, ECLS-K’s main school contact, referred to as the School Coordinator, provided information on whether a student received special education services. The School Coordinator also identified the student’s primary service provider (i.e., the person with primary responsibility for providing the student’s special education services), who identified the student’s primary disability. Additional information was collected on the student and the student’s school, including the student’s sex, race/ethnicity, and poverty status (poor or nonpoor) and the school’s control (public or private), urbanicity (central city, urban fringe/large town, or small town/rural), region, and poverty concentration (higher poverty schools are those with 50 percent or more students eligible for the National School Lunch Program; lower poverty schools are those with fewer than 50 percent of students eligible).

This issue brief provides a detailed description of the proportion of elementary school students receiving special education in kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and fifth grade; the primary disabilities of these students; and the variation in these measures across a range of demographic and school characteristics.

PDF icon Demographic and School Characteristics of Students Receiving Special Education in the Elementary Grades

Related Projects

Project

Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS)

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies (ECLS) program offers the first nationally representative study of early childhood development and education in the United States. The ECLS program currently has three separate longitudinal studies fielded by the National Center for Education Statistics: The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99; the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort; the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 2010–11.

Further Reading

  • Timing and Duration of Student Participation in Special Education in the Primary Grades
  • Findings From the Fourth-Grade Round of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011)
  • Eighth-Grade Algebra: Findings From the Eighth-Grade Round of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K)
  • Arts Instruction of Public School Students in the First and Third Grades
  • English Language Program Participation Among Students in the Kindergarten Class of 2010-11: Spring 2011 to Spring 2012
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Kristin Flanagan

Kristin Flanagan

Managing Researcher

Topic

Special Education
Early Childhood and Child Development

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