How Many Students Get Special Education?
Updated: December 15, 2025. Reviewer: Dr. Rose Sebastian, Ed.D.
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Numbers of Students and Adults With Disabilities
Not every student with a disability receives special education services. Some have 504 plans. Some just use ADA accessibility features. Some get no supports at all.
The CDC says that almost 29% of Americans have some sort of a disability. Census.gov puts it more like 13%. It depends a lot on how you ask the question and what you count and do not count as a disability. As we go through like, many of us will encounter challenges, whether it is losing hearing as we age or have an accident that impairs our mobility. As a result, the percentage of people with disabilities gets higher as they get older– by the time we are elderly, almost all of us will have a disability. That is why the disability community often describes people as “temporarily able bodied,” because none of us are guaranteed it forever.
Educational definitions of disability tend to be more generous than the CDC or Census because schools are looking at anything that impacts your ability to succeed in school– which is a broader category than the more functional limitations focused on by the other counts. As a result, about 17% of all students are served under either an IEP or a 504– 14% under IEPs and 3% under 504 plans.
Who Gets Special Education Services?
By disability
While the numbers are shifting, the most common disability is a specific learning disability (34% of students served in 2022). The second most common is a speech and language impairment (18%). Third most common is other health impaired (16.5%– note this is the category for ADHD), and the fourth most common is Autism at 12.9%. Then comes an intellectual disability (6%) and emotional disturbance (4.6%). All other disabilities combined only equal 7.7% (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2024).
By race
Special education is not, nor has it ever been, race neutral. The federal government makes states report out the race of students identified as having disabilities and what disabilities they are identified as having. A risk ratio says how likely it is that a student is identified as having a disability. A one means as likely as anyone else. A 2 means twice as likely and a .5 means half as likely.
White students have a risk ratio of 0.8. Asian students of 0.5. Black students are 1.3 and Native American students are 1.5. The biggest difference is in disability categories. Black students have a 1.6 risk of being identified as having an emotional disturbance and Native students a 1.5. In other words, when they are struggling with behaviors or managing emotions, we are much more likely to see that as an emotional disability than we are for other students. Latino students are more likely to be seen as having speech impairments. (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2024).
By location of services
67% of students with disabilities spend 80% or more of their day in general education classrooms. In theory that is– sometimes schools fudge numbers. Only 4.7% are served at nonpublic schools, homes, or hospitals (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2024).
By state
If you want proof of how subjective special education can be, just look at the percentage of students served in special education by state. In 2022, 6.5% of students in Hawaii and 8.5% of students in Tennessee and North Carolina had IEPs. In that same year, 13.2% of students in Maine, 12.5% of students in West Virginia, and 12.4% of students in Delaware had IEPs. There is a lot of variation between and within states in who and how students get identified for special education (U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2024).
