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FACTS

How many children?

In 2003-04, 5.87% (693,245) of children aged 3-5 years, nationally were receiving services under IDEA, Part B. In Michigan, this was 24,058 children or 6.08% of the 3-5 year population See Table 1.

Table 1 Numbers and percentages of 0-3 yrs receiving early intervention services in Michigan under Part C, at December 2004, and 3-5 year olds receiving services under Part B

Part C	Numbers of children	% of Michigan 0-3 pop.	% of US population 0-3
0-1	1,396
1-2	2,764
2-3	4,190
Total 0-3	8,350	2.16	2.30
Part B
3-5 yrs.	24,058	6.08	5.87

Source: U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, OSEP State Reported Data. (http://www.ideadata.org/)

About half (47.5%) of 3-5 year olds served in 2003-04 under IDEA had speech or language impairment. Others included children with mental retardation, emotional disturbance, orthopedic, hearing or vision impairments, autism, multiple impairments and developmental delay etc.

Where were services provided?

The majority of infants and toddlers received early intervention services (under Part C) at home, followed by around 1 in 5.6 who were served in a developmental delay program. Approximately, 1 in 6.1 received services at the service providers' location (OSEP, 2003, Table 6-4).

Children aged, 3-5 years were almost equally likely to be provided services in either a regular early childhood setting or a special education class. However, these regular early childhood settings were primarily targeted towards vulnerable, high-risk and low-income families. Such programs were primarily Head Start and Michigan School Readiness Programs. (See Table 2).

Table 2. Percentage of students, 3-5 years, with disabilities, served in different preschool environments under IDEA, Part B, 2004

Setting	MI Percentage of students (n=24,058)	US Percentage of students (n= 691,103)
Early childhood setting (EC)	47.71	32.74
Early childhood special setting (ECS)	41.44	32.76
Home	1.39	3.10
P/T (part-time) EC & P/T ECS	3.99	16.84
Residential	0	0.07
Separate school	1.07	2.83
Itinerant outside home	4.38	10.48
Reverse mainstream	0	1.19

Source: U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, OSEP State Reported Data. (http://www.ideadata.org/)

Many children with disabilities begin the journey towards identification once they begin to mix with other children and parents have the support of staff but this may not be complete by the time they leave. These children, amongst others, will not be included in the statistics and therefore the numbers of children cannot be viewed as equivalent to the potential unmet needs for services.

Educational settings for children (3-5 years) with disabilities in Michigan

• In 2003 & 2004, just less than half of the known children with disabilities who were in early childhood education were in a setting such as the Michigan School Readiness or Head Start Programs for children who are low-income and/or at risk or other early childhood settings.
• A slightly smaller percentage of children are receiving this service in a segregated special education setting.
• Very small percentages of children are receiving services in other types of settings.
• Children with disabilities who have not been diagnosed and are not receiving services from the Education Department will not appear in these figures.

This chart is based on the Special Education Student Data-base compiled by the Office of Special Education and Early Intervention Services, Michigan Department of Education. These figures will be up-dated as soon as the most current data is available.

Definitions of Terms used in the figure above