The National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) affirms the importance of transition as a critical component of successfully progressing from secondary school to college or university for students with learning disabilities. Although NJCLD has addressed secondary to postsecondary education transition planning in a previous paper,…

The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) maintains that it should be the goal of all educators and policymakers to understand, support, and facilitate the transition of children and youth with disabilities to post-school life. This includes supporting children and youth to achieve their respective goals regarding postsecondary education and…

In this brief, the perspectives of special education administrators from Massachusetts and Indiana, who have been engaged in college-based transition services (CBTS), are shared. It summarizes the conversations they had during a fall 2019 Think College webinar and a follow-up discussion in summer 2020. Each administrator has had extensive…

This article describes the Division of Career Development and Transition's (DCDT) position regarding Career Technical Education (CTE) and provides recommendations regarding more intense collaboration to improve access to and persistence in CTE for students with disabilities. Professional groups, such as the DCDT and the Association for Career and…

College and career readiness (CCR) consultation represents an opportunity for consultants to improve transition outcomes for students with disabilities and underserved youth and young adults. This special issue of the "Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation" includes articles that present novel applications of consultation…

Ginger Blalock is an educational consultant in the area of career development and transition for youth with special needs, currently serving as facilitator for the NMPED-funded Transition Outcomes Project and Statewide Transition Coordinating Council, educational consultant for Technet's administration of the NMDWS WIRED Project (Workforce…

Despite efforts over the past several decades to improve the delivery of transition services for youth with disabilities, outcomes continue to be unacceptably dismal for most youth, including high rates of unemployment, residential independence, and financial dependence, concurrent with low rates of enrollment in college or other postsecondary…

The paper examines the role of parents in the transition of developmentally disabled or otherwise handicapped persons into adult services. Because parents play an important role on the interdisciplinary team, parent training is important. This training can come in the form of university credit courses, workshops and mini-courses, self-help groups,…

Postsecondary education is a realistic and necessary option for successful adult outcomes. An understanding of the realities in postsecondary education is necessary if students with disabilities and their families are to be prepared to make wise choices for successful transition. School personnel should use the high school years to implement…

This article first differentiates educational and transitional services for students with significant disabilities, ages 18-21, and then reviews options for age-appropriate educational and transition experiences for this population. These include: (1) programs that serve public school students on college campuses and in community settings and (2)…

This article comments on a study that found teachers believed that both inclusive education and community-based instruction were effective in preparing students with disabilities for adulthood. It argues that secondary students should be members of age-appropriate high school classes and receive educational and community-based services during…

This paper outlines the arrangements for assessing school leavers under Sections 5 and 6 of Great Britain's Disabled Persons Act, summarizes the results of research in Avon (England) following the lives of 50 people with severe learning difficulties just before and after they left school. Presents a model for individual and strategic planning to…

Discusses community-based assessment and how it was linked with the job-matching process to assist students with severe disabilities in the job development and placement process. (JOW)

This article argues that the trend toward supported employment and transition services still rests on a dependency model of disability. It proposes a model of education for the empowerment of full citizenship in which persons with disabilities are seen as one of many groups disadvantaged by current social prejudice and exclusion. (DB)

This article discusses the inclusion of systematic preference assessment within transitional planning as a way to accurately interpret the preferences of students who use limited symbolic or nonsymbolic communication means. By using person-centered planning as a framework, it illustrates how to embed preference assessment within transitional…