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This article is part of the “90 for All” series, which examines the challenges facing traditionally underserved students, particularly low-income students, English-language learners, students of color and students with disabilities.

Though the reasons are unclear, the number of students identified as disabled is rising, amplifying longstanding questions about how best to prepare this key subgroup of students for high school graduation and beyond.

According to a recent Education Week analysis of school-age children covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the count of students ages 6-21 with disabilities fell to a low of 5.67 million in 2011. By 2014, it had grown to 5.83 million, the most recent number available.

The Ed Week article notes that part of the growth stems from a jump in autism classifications nationally—which climbed 165 percent between the 2005-06 and 2014-15 school years. 

The 2016 Building a Grad Nation data brief illuminates the issue: Nationally, students without identified disabilities graduate at a rate of 84.8 percent, compared with just 63.1 percent of students with disabilities – a gap of more than 21 percentage points.

And 33 states graduate less than 70 percent of their students with disabilities; six of those states – Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and South Carolina – graduate fewer than half of students with disabilities. (See the data brief.)

“Studies have estimated that 85 to 90 percent of students with disabilities can graduate on time with the right interventions,” said Jennifer DePaoli, senior education adviser at Civic Enterprises and co-author of the Building a Grad Nation data brief and annual report.

“Schools, districts and states need to do more to provide these students with appropriate supports and successfully put them on the path to high school graduation and beyond.”

Civic and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, in partnership with America’s Promise Alliance and the Alliance for Excellent Education, release the annual Building a Grad Nation report, which details the nation’s progress toward a 90 percent graduation rate.

Last year’s report included policy recommendations aimed at resolving problems that can make the graduation rate for students with disabilities hard to track and impede graduation for those youth.

As a nation, the report notes, we must:

Ensure consistency and comparability in graduation rate data for students with disabilities at the federal and state levels. The U.S. Department of Education should establish a clear definition of the students who are included in the students with disabilities category of the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate to be used in all states. States, not individual school districts, should set and clarify the allowances they intend to grant to students with disabilities to earn a standard diploma.

Limit exiting options. States should establish a standard diploma available to all students and limit exiting options that prematurely put students with disabilities off track to graduating with a standard diploma.

Address disproportionality issues. Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to receive out-of-school suspensions. All states should move to make disaggregated discipline data publicly available on their state and district report cards.

Stay tuned for the 2016 Building a Grad Nation report, which will be available May 9.