The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates transition services to prepare students with disabilities to live and work in the community as adults; the School-to-Work (STW) Opportunities Act requires that all students, including those with disabilities, have access to all STW activities. This paper overviews collaborative…

ASPIRE--"Assisting Special Populations in Readiness for Employment"--is a secondary special education transition program featuring coordinated services between the public and private sectors to integrate secondary level disabled students into subsidized private sector employment. ASPIRE was introduced into the Lake Tahoe Unified School…

These materials present information on implementing a collaborative team model in the delivery of transition services to students with disabilities. The materials provide charts and forms outlining strategies to be used by a local interagency transition team to assess its existing level of collaboration, to conceptualize its jointly endorsed…

This paper describes transitional programs developed by Black Hills Special Services Cooperative (BHSSC) to meet the needs of disabled students in rural areas. In cooperation with other public and private agencies, BHSSC provides comprehensive vocational rehabilitation services and community living programs to help individuals with severe…

During the 1980s, school-community partnerships increased nationwide, prompted by diminishing federal and state financial support for education, increasing numbers of at-risk students, and initiatives promoting local decision-making. Numerous examples in the literature portray partnerships involving "adoption" of schools by businesses, school use…

This study, undertaken at a Michigan high school, examined the development of collaborative relationships among school personnel, community members, and agency staff for the effective transition of students with disabilities from school to adult life. It attempted to identify the essential components and common barriers to such relationships and…

Project WORK was developed by San Diego State University and San Diego City Schools in California to prepare young people with disabilities for work and life after high school. The program teaches employment skills; supports students in their first work experience; works with students and their families to plan for the student's work and life…

The PASSAGEWAY Project (Program To Assist Secondary Students in Achieving Gainful Employment for West Alabama Youth) sought to increase the academic, social, and job skills of high-risk and dropout special education students. A cooperative program of the University of West Alabama, public schools, businesses, and social service agencies, the…

This paper describes the Community Transition Center (CTC) model, being tested in six districts in rural Wisconsin. The model is a way of conceptualizing and organizing the employment-related needs of mainstreamed mildly handicapped youths who are exiting secondary schools. The model emphasizes the role of secondary school transition programming,…

Project UNITE (Unified Intercommunity Transition and Empowerment for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities) is a federally funded transition systems change grant in Virginia which attempts to integrate services among educational systems, human service agencies, communities, families, and consumers with disabilities who are involved in…

During 1988-91, the School, College, and University Partnership (SCUP) program at Northern Arizona University (NAU) provided services to disadvantaged students in seven rural high schools on or near the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Many of these students came from low-income families, lived in geographically isolated locations, and attended…

This report describes a pilot project of the West Hartford (Connecticut) Public Schools to help high school graduates who are seriously emotionally disturbed (SED) to successfully transition to community living and to employment. Program services include assessment and planning before graduation as well as support services after beginning college…

The U.S. work force is unready for the new jobs, unready for the new realities, unready for the new challenges of the 1990s. Across the board, jobs are demanding better reading, writing, and reasoning skills and more math and science. Statistics define the scope of the problem: 25 percent of young people drop out of high school; 70 percent of all…