Table 8. Youth's reported perceptions of academic challenges, by disability category
| Academic challenges | Learning disability | Speech/ language impair- ment |
Mental retar- dation |
Emo- tional distur- bance |
Hearing impair- ment |
Visual impair- ment |
Ortho- pedic impair- ment |
Other health impair- ment |
Autism | Trau- matic brain injury |
Multiple disabili- ties |
Deaf- blind- ness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percent / standard error | ||||||||||||
| Percentage reporting school is: | ||||||||||||
| Not hard at all | 9.6 | 16.0 | 22.4 | 26.8 | 16.7 | 12.9 | 12.8 | 14.3 | 14.0 | 14.4 | 23.6 | 11.2 |
| (2.67) | (3.45) | (4.96) | (4.64) | (4.83) | (4.20) | (4.04) | (3.61) | (5.33) | (6.62) | (6.54) | (5.95) | |
| Not very hard | 49.4 | 42.5 | 34.1 | 34.7 | 40.1 | 40.4 | 43.0 | 41.8 | 39.4 | 43.3 | 37.5 | 34.1 |
| (4.54) | (4.65) | (5.64) | (4.99) | (6.48) | (6.27) | (5.99) | (5.09) | (7.50) | (9.35) | (7.45) | (8.94) | |
| Pretty hard | 36.3 | 37.5 | 36.6 | 31.7 | 27.9 | 31.2 | 35.0 | 37.6 | 39.4 | 35.5 | 30.9 | 48.0 |
| (4.36) | (4.56) | (5.73) | (4.88) | (5.81) | (5.81) | (5.77) | (5.00) | (7.50) | (9.03) | (7.11) | (9.42) | |
| Very hard | 4.7 | 3.9 | 6.9 | 6.9 | 4.3 | 4.5 | 9.2 | 6.3 | 7.2 | 6.7 | 8.0 | 6.7 |
| (1.92) | (1.82) | (3.02) | (2.66) | (2.90) | (2.86) | (3.50) | (2.51) | (3.97) | (4.72) | (4.18) | (4.71) | |
| Percentage reporting having trouble: | ||||||||||||
| Paying attention at school | ||||||||||||
| Never | 23.5 | 18.0 | 34.9 | 20.1 | 31.0 | 33.5 | 30.5 | 14.2 | 20.7 | 14.6 | 30.0 | 38.8 |
| (3.84) | (3.61) | (5.72) | (4.20) | (6.03) | (5.90) | (5.44) | (3.59) | (6.23) | (6.55) | (7.04) | (9.19) | |
| Just a few times | 40.3 | 53.4 | 33.8 | 36.9 | 33.3 | 42.5 | 43.4 | 44.9 | 28.5 | 54.1 | 37.6 | 38.4 |
| (4.44) | (4.69) | (5.67) | (5.05) | (6.14) | (6.18) | (5.86) | (5.12) | (6.94) | (9.24) | (7.44) | (9.17) | |
| At least weekly but not daily | 29.5 | 19.7 | 15.9 | 32.0 | 24.5 | 19.2 | 19.3 | 36.1 | 42.5 | 23.5 | 18.3 | 20.6 |
| (4.13) | (3.74) | (4.39) | (4.89) | (5.60) | (4.92) | (4.66) | (4.94) | (7.60) | (7.86) | (5.94) | (7.62) | |
| Daily | 6.7 | 8.9 | 15.5 | 11.0 | 11.2 | 4.8 | 6.8 | 4.8 | 8.3 | 7.8 | 14.1 | 2.2 |
| (2.26) | (2.68) | (4.34) | (3.28) | (4.11) | (2.67) | (2.97) | (2.20) | (4.24) | (4.97) | (5.35) | (2.77) | |
| Finishing homework | ||||||||||||
| Never | 24.7 | 25.7 | 37.9 | 27.1 | 30.4 | 44.3 | 36.5 | 30.7 | 26.4 | 38.4 | 42.1 | 41.0 |
| (3.95) | (4.12) | (5.83) | (4.77) | (6.01) | (6.31) | (5.78) | (4.84) | (6.83) | (9.01) | (7.81) | (9.27) | |
| Just a few times | 44.0 | 44.9 | 29.6 | 31.4 | 35.0 | 32.5 | 37.6 | 30.3 | 34.7 | 29.8 | 29.8 | 29.3 |
| (4.54) | (4.69) | (5.49) | (4.98) | (6.23) | (5.95) | (5.81) | (4.82) | (7.37) | (8.47) | (7.23) | (8.58) | |
| At least weekly but not daily | 23.4 | 18.6 | 15.1 | 25.7 | 17.6 | 18.0 | 17.5 | 30.6 | 27.8 | 23.2 | 10.7 | 18.2 |
| (3.87) | (3.67) | (4.30) | (4.69) | (4.97) | (4.88) | (4.56) | (4.84) | (6.94) | (7.82) | (4.89) | (7.27) | |
| Daily | 8.0 | 10.8 | 17.4 | 15.8 | 17.0 | 4.2 | 8.5 | 8.4 | 11.0 | 8.6 | 17.4 | 11.5 |
| (2.48) | (2.93) | (4.56) | (3.91) | (4.90) | (2.82) | (3.35) | (2.91) | (4.85) | (5.19) | (6.00) | (6.01) | |
| SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Special Education Research, National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2), Wave 2 youth telephone interview/mail survey, 2003. | ||||||||||||
