The 2021 Youth Transition Report: Outcomes for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities www.iel.org | Fax: 202-872-4050 4301 Connecticut Ave. N.W. | Suite 100 | Washington, DC 20008 Copyright © 2021 Institute for Educational Leadership Acknowledgments This report was produced by the Institute for Educational Leadership, Inc. (IEL) to examine the persistent gaps in educational and employment outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities in the United States. The report focuses on comparative data for youth and young adults with and without disabilities between the ages of 14 and 24, including those opportunity youth that education and workforce systems have failed to adequately support, to highlight the needs of this transition age population. This information can support practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to better understand and serve this population. The authors wish to thank Helen Janc Malone for her quality reviews of the report drafts and support for this work. 2 Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 2021 Report Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Disability Prevalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Education and Disability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 High School Attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 College Enrollment and Attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Employment and Disability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Opportunity Youth with Disabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Opportunity Youth and Young Adults . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Poverty and Disability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Introduction About the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) The Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL) is a national expert in community-driven leadership development in the intersecting areas of education, employment, and health. The common thread in our work is supporting community and institutional leaders as they build systems around racial, disability inclusion, and economic equity goals. Since 1964, our journey and experiences have resulted in approaches, tools, and practices that reflect the needs of leaders no matter where they sit in communities. The authentic relationships that we build in the process shape the way we engage community leaders, do our work, and provide the foundation for deeper impact as we continue to address systemic challenges in the 400 plus communities that trust us as partners. Purpose of This Report The 2021 Youth Transition Report underscores the persistent and pernicious gap between youth and young adults with disabilities and those without disabilities on measures of success in education, employment, opportunity, and poverty. While data and reports exist for the working-age adult population and children with disabilities, IEL recognized a lack of information specific to the youth and young adult population in the 14-24 age group. IEL’s Youth Transition Report addresses this need by presenting an annual snapshot of the outcome gaps between youth and young adults with disabilities and those without disabilities, including those opportunity youth whom the education and workforce systems have not adequately served and supported. This report consists of the status of the selected population, education, employment, opportunity youth, and poverty indicators. IEL has also produced a supplemental Change Analysis report that can be found on our website: https://iel.org/iel-youth-transition-reports- outcomes-for-youth-and-young-adults-with-disabilities/. 4 Methods Key population, education, employment, and opportunity youth indicators are derived from the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) population file (2015-2019 ACS 5-year estimates). IEL conducted a custom analysis of youth and young adults at both national and state levels. Therefore, the estimates in this report may be slightly different from the estimates presented in the US Census Bureau’s pre-made tables. We define youth as ages 14 to 17 years old and young adults as ages 18 to 24 years old. This report explores descriptive status of education and employment for youth and young adults at national and state levels. Meanwhile, we estimated the gaps in educational and workforce outcomes for youth and young adults with and without disabilities. All gaps displayed in this report are statistically significant gaps. The report also includes calculated data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The structure of the 2021 Youth Transition Report is similar to previous reports. In addition, we created a separate Change Analysis report that looks at the 3-year trends in state youth disability rates, high school achievement, college enrollment, and employment for the 2017–2019 period for youth and young adults with disabilities. Suggested Citation Cheng, L., & Shaewitz, D. (2021). The 2021 youth transition report: Outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities. Washington, DC: Institute for Educational Leadership 5 2021 Report Highlights This report includes the analysis of key educational and employment indicators for youth and young adults with and without disabilities at both national and state levels. In cases where data is not available or applicable for the under 16 or under 18 population, we have noted the age ranges used. Disability Rates: While the population of youth and young adults with disabilities varies by state, in those states with the highest rates of disability for 14-24 year-olds the rates are more than twice that of states with the lowest rates of disability. Disability prevalence for this age group ranges from a high of 10.8 percent in Maine to a low of 4.1 percent in Hawaii. The largest category of disability, which is self- reported through the U.S. Census, is cognitive difficulty (68.8 percent of youth with disabilities nationally). Cognitive difficulty is a broad category that includes youth and young adults with autism, Down Syndrome, traumatic brain injury, dementia, attention deficit disorder, specific learning disability, mental and emotional challenges. High School Completion: Educational outcomes and attainment gaps between youth/young adults with and without disabilities vary by state. The difference in high school completion for students with disabilities vary from the highest rate of completion in Washington, DC (85.0 percent) to the lowest rate in South Dakota (65.9 percent). In addition, there remains a significant gap in high school attainment when comparing students with and without disabilities, with the widest gap at more than 21 percent. There is no state in which the high school attainment gap between students with and without disabilities is close to zero. College Enrollment: College enrollment rates for young adults aged 18-24 with disabilities in the U.S. is 27.3 percent compared to the national average of 43.4 percent for young adults without disabilities. States vary from the highest rate of college enrollment at 39.2 percent in Rhode Island to the lowest rate of enrollment at 10.2 percent in Alaska for young adults with disabilities. The average gap for college enrollment between 6 young adults with and without disabilities was about 16 percent nationally; no state has closed the gap in college enrollment. College Completion: College completion at the bachelor’s degree level is another measure of success for young adults with disabilities. Academic success varies among states from the highest rate of completion in Washington, DC (15 percent) to the lowest rate of completion in Wyoming (0.6 percent). The gap between those college students with and without disabilities was 7.4 percent. The narrowest gap in bachelor’s degree attainment at 1.2 percent is in Alaska, yet the state also has the lowest enrollment rate of college students with disabilities at 10.2 percent. Employment: Nationally, youth and young adults with disabilities (ages 14–24) are about 16 percent less likely to be employed than their peers without disabilities. North Dakota has the highest employment rates for youth and young adults with disabilities at 41.5 percent compared to the lowest rates of employment in West Virginia at 19.3 percent. Of those youth and young adults with disabilities who are employed, the patterns of employment are similar, with young people most likely to be employed by a private for-profit company or business. Opportunity Youth: Opportunity youth and young adults are commonly defined as those ages 14-24 who are neither in school nor employed. Our report examines the opportunity youth who are not in school and not in the labor force, which represents a true disconnection from systems. Opportunity youth with disabilities represent 19.7 percent of the national population compared to only 5.6 percent of opportunity youth without disabilities. Poverty: Youth and young adults with disabilities are also more likely to live in poverty than their peers without disabilities. Poverty rates in some states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Mississippi are more than 30 percent compared to a national average of 24.2 percent for youth with disabilities; those rates are also higher than the national average poverty rate for youth without disabilities at 17.8 percent. 7 Disability Prevalence The rate of disability for youth and young adults ages 14-24 is 6.3 percent (see Table A1 in Appendix A for detailed information). Figure 1 demonstrates that the prevalence of disability increases with age as people acquire disabilities over a lifetime. These data are similar to patterns of disability rates in the previous year (see 2020 Youth Transition Report). FIGURE 1. Disability Rates by Age in the U .S .: 2019 Data Source: Calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, Public Use Microdata Sample 8 The prevalence of disability varies by state. The following map (Figure 2) displays the distribution of disability rates for youth and young adults. FIGURE 2. Disability Rates of Youth and Young Adults (Ages 14-24) by State: 2019 WA ME MT ND VT MN NH OR WI NY MA ID SD CT MI WY RI PA IA NJ NE OH DE NV IL IN DC WV UT CO VA MD CA KS MO KY NC TN OK AR SC AZ NM MS AL GA TX LA FL AK Disability Rates HI 4.11% 7.43% 10.76% 9 For youth and young adults with disabilities, this prevalence rate ranges from 4.1 percent in Hawaii to 10.8 percent in Maine. As shown in Table 1, states with the highest rates of disability for this age group show about twice the prevalence as those states with the lowest rates of disabilities. TABLE 1. Five Highest and Lowest Disability Rates of Youth and Young Adults (Ages 14-24) by State: 2019 States with Highest Rates States with Lowest Rates of Disability of Disability 1. Maine, 10.8% 1. Hawaii, 4.1% 2. Vermont, 8.8% 2. California, 5.0% 3. West Virginia, 8.7% 3. New Jersey, 5.2% 4. Idaho, 8.6% 4. Illinois, 5.3% 5. Kentucky, 8.5% 5. Colorado, 5.5% Source: Calculations based on U.S. Census Bureau, 2015-2019 American Community Survey, Public Use Microdata Sample. The U.S. Census defines six types of disability including self-care difficulty, hearing difficulty, vision difficulty, independent living difficulty, ambulatory difficulty, and cognitive difficulty. The highest rates of reported disability are cognitive difficulties (68.8 percent), which may include youth and young adults with autism, Down Syndrome, traumatic brain injury, dementia, attention deficit disorder, specific learning disability, mental and emotional or other challenges. 10