This postschool outcome study was conducted in collaboration with transition coordinators at four local education agencies to evaluate the utilization and effectiveness of their school district's secondary education programs and transition services. By means of a phone and record review survey, adapted from one developed by the Ohio systems change project for transition, data were collected on 140 randomly selected special education graduates who were one and three years post graduation. A logistic regression analysis showed that vocational education, work study participation, attending a rural school, and having a learning disability were the best predictors of full-time employment after graduation, whereas participation in regular academics and attending a suburban school setting were the best predictors of postsecondary education. The transition coordinators recorded the amount of time it took to complete the surveys for their graduates and participated in the evaluation of their data. It took longer for urban students and students who were further from graduation to complete the followup surveys.The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) initiated the requirement that public schools develop a transition plan for students with individual education programs (IEPs) aged 16 or older, or younger if appropriate [20 U.S.C. § 1414 (d) (1 ) (A) (vii) (III) ] . This mandate largely stemmed from research in the 1980s showing that young adults with disabilities were experiencing poor postschool integration, high dropout rates, high unemployment, low rates of postsecondary education, and lowquality independent living and community participation outcomes

The current approach to reading comprehension instruction is not producing the desired outcomes. Provincial, national and international tests indicate that more than half of South African learners cannot read, understand and answer basic comprehension questions. This research project was informed by Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory. A case study was conducted with a ten-year old Grade 4 boy who experienced difficulty with understanding comprehension questions. A six-week intervention was designed to improve his comprehension abilities and to identify instructional principles that were appropriate for him. Interviews and observations were conducted and inductively analysed. Findings showed that the learner was well equipped to retrieve explicitly stated information but struggled with higher-order level questions such as drawing inferences or evaluating content. Certain instructional practices were more favourable than others when teaching reading strategies.