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Twenty-five years ago educational services for children with disabilities were frequently fragmented, underfunded, highly segregated, and unreliable. Public schools were often ill prepared and unwilling to provide special and necessary services to children with disabilities. Over the past two decades, efforts to provide an appropriate education for children with disabilities in America—through a series of state statutes, federal court cases, and federal laws—have led to the development of a large special education system to address the needs of these children. This journal issue focuses on the development of that special education system and examines its components, its strengths and weaknesses, and the areas in which improvement is needed. This Child Indicators article examines some of the key federal statistics on the provision of special education services for children with disabilities. Statistics have played a part in shaping special education policy. A highlight of congressional hearings in the 1970s was the finding that 2.5 million children with disabilities in this country were not receiving an education appropriate to their needs, while almost 2 million others were receiving no education at all. 1 As described by Martin and Martin in this journal issue, congressional response to such statistical evidence of underservice of the disabled included passage of Public Law 94‐142, the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, which required that all students with disabilities receive a free public education appropriately tailored to their individual needs. A key element of this statute and its successors was that federal funding be provided to states for special education services based on state reports of the number of students with disabilities receiving special education and related services. This and other aspects of federal legislation have fostered the development of a data collection system to monitor the provision of special education services to disabled students by local and state educational agencies.

Violence against children and youths has always occurred, but it has recently been subject to increased public attention. This heightened attention is spawned by high-profile cases of stranger abductions, sexual assault, child abuse, and homicide, and by statistics suggesting an increase in the number of cases of child victimization. For example, newspapers recently reported that almost twice as many individuals under age 20 (5,500) died from gunshots in 1993 as in 1984. 1 But deaths, while the most dramatic of victimizations, are only the tip of the iceberg. More frequently, children are abused and neglected by parents, assaulted by siblings, or intimidated by other children. When all of these types of victimization are considered as a whole, children suffer far more victimizations than do members of other age groups. Children are more prone to victimization than adults not only because they are smaller and weaker than adults but also because they are dependent on adults for their day-to-day care and can seldom choose where and with whom they will live and spend time. Problems such as neglect, family abduction, and psychological maltreatment are strongly related to dependency, and these are much more common for children than for most adults. As children age, they become more independent, so the types of victimizations that they are most at risk for change, and the risks arise more from associations with other youths than from dependency on adults. 2 The concept of children as victims brings together the disparate studies of child abuse, sexual abuse, kidnapping, and other forms of violence with studies of such victimizations as assaults by siblings and peer violence. This integration highlights the number of victimizations that children face and may make it easier to identify relationships among different kinds of victimization and to design appropriate interventions. 2 Ultimately, however, defining and measuring child victimization as an integrative category of experiences is useful only if doing so leads to a better understanding of the

Public concern about homelessness in the United States has increased in recent years. A late 1995 Gallup poll found that 86% of Americans feel sympathy for the homeless, and 33% report that they feel more sympathy now than they did five years ago. According to the same poll, one reason for this apparent increase in sympathy is that 17% of Americans, primarily women and young adults, believe that they could become homeless.1 The fact that these groups are concerned about homelessness reflects, in part, two decades of increases in the visibility of homeless women and children in the United States. Published reports suggest that most homeless families with children are headed by single women between the ages of 26 and 30 who have never been married and have two children.2 Because shelter is a basic human need, it is not surprising that the effects of homelessness on children and families appear to be harsh and multifaceted. According to one study, homeless women are significantly more likely to have low birth weight babies than are similar poor women who are housed.3 Others report that, compared to the general population of children, homeless children have twice as many health problems, are more likely to go hungry, and have higher rates of developmental delay; and although findings have not been consistent, higher rates of depression, anxiety, and behavior problems have been reported for homeless children.4 Because, however, as discussed in this article, collecting reliable and comprehensive information about the population of homeless families with children is very difficult, accurately estimating the size, scope, and impact of homelessness among families with children in the United States has been almost impossible.5 Estimates of the size and composition of the population of homeless families and children are important, however, to understand the etiology and consequences of homelessness, to design effective programs and policies to address the problem, and to evaluate whether interventions are working. This Child Indicators article focuses on available data on homeless families and children. First, it reviews different definitions of homelessness and

Unlike children in most other economically developed countries, children in the United States are not guaranteed health insurance coverage. Indeed, many U.S. children have no health insurance coverage at all. Their lack of coverage restricts their access to health care services: uninsured children have fewer physician visits per year than children with insurance and are less likely to have a usual source of routine health care. 1 In recognition of the importance of health insurance for children’s access to health care, a number of public programs, the largest of which is the federal-state Medicaid program, have been developed to provide health insurance benefits to poor children and others who would not otherwise have access to health care coverage. Indeed, health insurance coverage for all Americans was a key element of the recent effort to reform health care in the United States. 2 Because of the importance of health insurance coverage, many surveys and reports are devoted to gathering and disseminating statistics on the number and proportion of the U.S. population (including children) who have health insurance of various types. However, the statistics they present can appear contradictory. For example, for 1993, there were three major estimates of the number of uninsured children: the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) estimated that there were 11.1 million children without insurance; the Census Bureau, 9.5 million; and the Urban Institute, 8.7 million. 3 These different estimates were all based on a single data source, the 1994 Current Population Survey (CPS). This Child Indicators article examines the CPS as a source of data on health insurance coverage, the reasons for the different estimates of the numbers of uninsured children, recent trends in health insurance coverage for children, and the growing importance of the Medicaid program as both a current and a potential source of health insurance for children. This analysis suggests that, even though interpretations of CPS data may seem inconsistent, there are some clear trends in health insurance coverage for children. First, the proportion of children 0 to 10 years old who do not have health insurance has declined slightly over the past five years, while the

Medical and technological advances in the care of infants with low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams, or 5 pounds, 8 ounces) and very low birth weight (less than 1,500 grams, or 3 pounds, 5 ounces) have substantially increased the survival rate for these infants and have led to concerns about the demands their care places upon their families and society. The dollar cost of the resources used disproportionately to care for low birth weight children is one measure of the burden of low birth weight. Using analyses of national survey data for 1988 for children ages 0 to 15, this article presents estimates of the direct incremental costs of low birth weight--costs of the resources used to care for low birth weight infants above and beyond those used for infants of normal birth weight. In 1988, health care, education, and child care for the 3.5 to 4 million children ages 0 to 15 born low birth weight between $5.5 and $6 billion more than they would have if those children had been born normal birth weight. Low birth weight accounts for 10% of all health care costs for children, and the incremental direct costs of low birth cost weight are of similar magnitude to those of unintentional injuries among children and in 1988 were substantially greater than the direct costs of AIDS among Americans of all ages in that year.