Notable Statistics

Did you know that…

• As many as 1 out of every 5 people in the United States has a learning disability. Almost 3 million children (ages 6 through 21) have some form of a learning disability and receive special education in school. In fact, over half of all children who receive special education have a learning disability (source: National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities –Twenty-fourth Annual Report to Congress, U.S. Department of Education, 2002)

• Persons with learning disabilities are not “lazy” or “dumb.” In fact, they usually have average or above average intelligence. Often they fall within the range or “gifted.” Their brains just process information differently (source: Developed by Rochelle Kenyon, Ed.D., Project Director – Florida’s Bridges to Practice
  A Project of Florida Human Resources Development, Inc.
  A State Leadership Project Funded by the State of Florida, Office of Workforce Education September 2003).

• A learning disability is not a disease, so there is no cure, but there are ways to overcome the challenges it poses through identification and accommodation (source: Developed by Rochelle Kenyon, Ed.D., Project Director – Florida’s Bridges to Practice
  A Project of Florida Human Resources Development, Inc.
  A State Leadership Project Funded by the State of Florida, Office of Workforce Education September 2003).

• Children who have learning disabilities are at risk for having lower self-esteem and self worth than that of their peers (source: Aoife Lyons).

• Children with learning disabilities tend to make global self-judgments.This means that if they are struggling in school, they might perceive all areas of their development in a negative light (source: Aoife Lyons).

• Untreated depression can lead to an increased incidence of depression in adulthood (National Institute of Mental Health, 2000).

• Depressed teens are more likely to have trouble at school and in jobs, and to struggle with relationships (source: www.teendepression.org).

• Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide, the third leading cause of death among teenagers (source: www.teendepression.org).

• An estimated 160,000 children miss school every day out of fear of attack or intimidation by other students (source: National Education Association, 1995).

• Those who are bullied are five times more likely to be depressed and far more likely to be suicidal (source: Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, September 2003.

• The effects of bullying can be long-lasting. By age 23, children who were bullied in middle school were more depressed and had lower self-esteem than their peers who had not been bullied (source: Dan Olweus, University of Bergen, Norway, 1993).