After decades of what seemed to be an inexorable upward path, the number of students classified as learning-disabled declined from year to year over much of the past decade—a change in direction that is spurring debates among experts about the reasons why.
The percentage of 3- to 21-year-old students nationwide classified as having a “specific learning disability” dropped steadily from 6.1 percent in the 2000-01 school year to 5.2 percent in 2007-08, according to the most recent data available, which comes from the U.S Department of Education’s 2009 Digest of Education Statistics. In numbers, that’s a drop from about 2.9 million students to 2.6 million students.
In this light, the data on autism are all the more remarkable. While other categories of "specific learning disability" are going down, autism is going up. See numbers in thousands:
- 1995-96 ..... 28
- 1997-98 ..... 42
- 1998-99 ..... 53
- 1999-00 .... 65
- 2000-01 .... 94
- 2001-02 ... 114
- 2002-03 ... 137
- 2003-04 ... 163
- 2004-05 ... 191
- 2005-06 ... 223
- 2006-07 ... 258
- 2007-08 ... 296
Here is another way to look at it: in 1995-96, kids with autism accounted for 0.5 percent of children served. In 2007-2008, that figure had increased ninefold, to 4.5 percent.
