[originaltext] Nearly a third of young people with disabilities have taken a

Nearly a third of young people with disabilities have taken at least some postsecondary classes within the first two years after they leave high school. The study finds that disabled students over all are less than half as likely as their peers to have attended college in the two years after high school, but the college-going rate varies greatly by type of disability: students with hearing or visual problems are as likely as nondisabled students to have done some postsecondary work.
    The study’s underlying purpose is to help gauge the success of federal laws and programs which ensures elementary and secondary schools to prepare disabled people for later life. But along the way, the study provides in-depth data about them.
    The study looked at a group of students who were in high school in 2001 and who had finished or left high school two years later.
    Of those, 31 percent of disabled students had attended a postsecondary institution since leaving high school. Nearly 20 percent of the students were attending college when the study was conducted, just under half of the proportion of the general population.
    The study also finds that 67 percent of students with hearing problems and 69 percent of students with visual problems had attended some college since high school. Only one in five students with emotional disabilities had received some postsecondary education since they left high school.