The Academic Achievement and Functional Performance of Youth With Disabilities

Academic Achievement

A considerable gap in achievement in language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies exists between youth with disabilities and their peers in the general population.

• Direct assessment results are reported as standard scores, which, for the general population of youth, have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. In the general population, 50 percent of youth score at the mean of 100 or above and 50 percent score below. In contrast to this distribution for the general population, from 77 percent to 86 percent of youth with disabilities have standard scores below the mean across subtests.
  
  
• In the general population, about 2 percent of youth have standard scores that are more than two standard deviations below the mean (i.e., below 70). Among youth with disabilities represented by those who participated in the direct assessment, from 14 percent to 27 percent score more than two standard deviations below the mean across subtests.
  
  
• Youth with disabilities have the greatest difficulty with understanding what they read; the mean passage comprehension standard score of 79 is significantly lower than any of the other scores.
  
  
• Vocabulary, as measured by the use of synonyms and antonyms, appears to pose the fewest challenges, with a mean standard score of 87, significantly higher than all other scores.
  
  
• Despite the low scores overall, on each measure, some youth with disabilities have scores above the mean; across the measures, from 12 percent to 23 percent score above the mean of 100.