The Transition of Youth with Disabilities to Adult Life: A Position Statement of the Division on Career Development and Transition, The Council for Exceptional Children

Strategies for Aligning Standards-Based Education and Transition

“…Examples of opportunities that students with disabilities need to participate in the general education classroom follow: Glatthorn and Craft-Tripp concluded that setting educational goals for many students with disabilities means looking beyond academic goals to a broader set of outcomes. As others have suggested (Halpern, 1994;Patton & Dunn, 1998;Polloway, Patton, Smith, & Roderique, 1991;Tashie, Shapiro-Barnard, Donoghue Dillon, Schuh, & Jorgenson, 2001), focusing on a broad set of outcomes means that curricula for some students with disabilities, particularly at the secondary level, include nonacademic components and emphasis on the transition to work and preparation for adjustment to adult roles.…”

“…The requirement logically holds education agencies responsible for providing appropriate transition planning through the IEP, secondary education curriculum accommodations and redesign, and interagency coordination to help students and families achieve postsecondary goals. Building upon the historical concepts of career development frameworks (Clark & Kolstoe, 1995;Halpern, 1994;Scharff & Hill, 1976;Ward & Halloran, 1993 ;Wehman, Kregel, Barcus, & Schalock, 1986;Will, 1986), Kohler (1998) characterized the high school years as requiring a "transition perspective" for education of youth with disabilities. Kochhar-Bryant and Bassett (2002) referred to transition as a "unifying framework" for aligning standardsbased education and transition services (see Figure 1).…”

Student Engagement and Leadership of the Transition Planning Process

“…Martin et al (1993) indicated that to facilitate the transition from high school to further education or employment, students need to learn to self-manage their IEP meetings by first participating, then learning to develop the IEP, and finally, managing or leading the IEP process. Halpern (1994) summarized the emerging student involvement concepts and concluded that students should be encouraged to the best of their abilities to become actively involved in the transition planning process. He added that student selfevaluation, student identification of postschool goals, and student choice of high school experiences would lead to enhanced student self-determination.…”

“…In a Division on Career Development and Transition (DCDT) position paper, Halpern (1994) indicated that typical assessment processes limit the "opportunities for people with disabilities to take charge and ownership of their own evaluations" (p. 118). Instead, the transition assessment process must actively engage students, and educators must teach the meaning of the assessment results to students so they can select appropriate postschool goals.…”

“…It was now required that students be invited to participate in transition planning IEP meetings. The result was that student involvement in the transition planning and education process became a foundational transition education practice, and active student participation in transition planning quickly became the "best" transition education practice (Halpern, 1994). This article will discuss the concept of student engagement and leadership of the transition education process by examining what CDTEI authors said and discovered over the past 35 years.…”