Report Reveals That Only 12% of Students Receiving Special Education Services in NYC Leave School With a Regular Diploma

New York City. Thursday, June 2, 2005. Advocates For Children (AFC) today released a report entitled "Leaving Empty-Handed: A Report on Graduation and Dropout Rates for Students who Receive Special Education Services in New York." This is the first public report highlighting graduation and dropout rates for students receiving special education services in New York City.

"Leaving Empty-Handed" examines federal, state and New York City Department of Education data for the past eight years to reveal abysmal graduation outcomes for New York City's most vulnerable children. The New York State Education Department's policy on student achievement contemplates that the majority of students receiving special education services will be able to graduate with a regular diploma. Yet, our findings on the graduation outcomes of students receiving special education services are appalling;

over the past 8 years, only 12% of students who received special education who left school earned a regular high school diploma.

"The achievement rates are grim and mean that most of the City's students receiving special education services are leaving school with no options for college, employment or independence." said Jill Chaifetz, Executive Director of AFC. "I am appalled, but not surprised by the results of our agency's research. Every day AFC's staff hears heartbreaking stories of students whose future has been damaged and potential wasted by the failures of the special education system. Our report confirms what we hear from parents about the state of their children's progress," stated Chaifetz.

The report contains detailed information about what is happening to students who received special education services in New York City and which schools are doing the best and the worst for its students with disabilities. Some of the findings of "Leaving Empty Handed" include:

* Almost 111,078 students who received special education services left school between the 1996-1997 and the 2003-2004 school years. Out of those students, only 512 (.004% of the exiters) earned Regents diplomas and only 13,160 (11.84% of exiters) earned local diplomas.

* Graduation reached an all time low in 1999-2000, when 9.4% of the students receiving special education services left with a regular diploma, a 5% drop from 1996-1997 in which 16% earned regular diplomas. Since 2000, the numbers have been slowly returning to the level of 1997, with a rate of 16% of exiters earning a regular diploma in 2003-2004. These figures likely include children with disabilities who are graduating from private schools and thus the numbers of children graduating from public schools may be significantly less.

* Less than 97 students receiving special education services who left school (less than 1%) earned their GED in 03-04, a shocking decrease since 1996-1997, when 493 students receiving special education services earned their GED and half the number who earned their GED in 2001-2002.

* In the 2002-2003 school year, 31% of students who received special education services who left school earned a regular high school diploma nationally; in New York State, the overall rate was 26%. During that same year, the rate in New York City was 12.8%.

* White and Asian students who received special education services graduated at a rate of approximately 22% of the students who left school, as compared with about 11% of their Black and Latino peers.

* 96% of the children classified as having an "emotional disturbance" who leave school do not earn a regular diploma.

* Three times the number of students receiving special education services drop out than earn a regular diploma or GED and more than seven times the number of students receiving special education services do not complete high school with a diploma than those who do.

* Out of 22,000 students in District 75, only 46 students earned a regular high school diploma.

* 11% of students receiving special education services who left school earned an alternative IEP diploma (a special education diploma) that does not count as a regular high school diploma for purposes of gaining admission to CUNY, SUNY, the armed forces, most vocational training programs or most jobs.

Regarding the report's findings, Elisa Hyman, AFC's Deputy Director stated "while the graduation crisis for students receiving special education services was not created by the Mayor and the Chancellor, they must take charge of this dire situation and enact common sense, meaningful reforms. They must not perpetuate the business-as-usual approach to service delivery that has failed tens of thousands students with disabilities."

In support of a goal of changing the system, "Leaving Empty Handed" contains a number of recommendations including a call to action for the New York City Department of Education to create a plan of action to address the crisis. This plan should include convening a task force and a panel of experts to assist them in revising service delivery to students with disabilities, creating performance-based outcomes and revising the student graduation and dropout accounting. The report also recommends creating a summer skills high school preparatory program for high school students receiving special education, developing GED programs that offer special education services, changing the policies for discharging and transferring students receiving special education services, complying with federal law with regard to a number of entitlements for students with disabilities and making sweeping changes to District 75's programs that serve children who should be on track to earn a regular diploma.

"Leaving Empty Handed" Report. (PDF)