Oregon schools are serving slightly more special education students than ever before, the Oregon Department of Education reported Wednesday.
The number of special education students rose by about 400 students, or one-half of 1 percent, to 74,829, during 2011-12, it said. Including preschoolers, Oregon educators served 84,683 students with disabilities.
Underlying the overall increase were several trends that The Oregonian has already written about:
- More students are qualifying for special education under the blanket term "other health impaired," which is most often used to get special education help for students who have attention deficit disorders.
- More young children are being identified as disabled and helped before they reach school age.
- The number of
The largest category of special education students are those with a specific learning disability. The count of students with learning disabilities was essentially unchanged at 27,000, the state reported.
The number of students in most other categories, including emotionally disturbed (about 4,600 students), intellectually disabled (3,900) and hearing impaired (1,100), also showed very little change from the previous year.
-- Betsy Hammond