Who are the essential partners in this process?
Page 3: School Personnel
In addition to the student and their family—who should always remain at the center of transition planning—the first group of people involved in interagency collaboration are school-based personnel. Teachers, administrators, and other service providers play a crucial role in developing and implementing a student’s IEP across the years. As a student approaches postsecondary transition, the school’s role expands to include coordination with external agencies and organizations. Successful interagency collaboration relies on the structural framework provided by the IEP team and the specialized leadership of a transition coordinator.
individualized education program (IEP) team
glossary
For Your Information
In addition to the required members, IEP teams often include other individuals to address the individualized needs of the student. This might include related services providers (e.g., speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist) or a child or family advocate. Some students and families might wish to invite informal supports (e.g., friends, neighbors, faith community representatives) to offer input on the student or the transition process.
The IEP Team
The IEP team is a multidisciplinary group that coordinates a student’s individualized supports and services at school. Along with the transition-aged student and their parents, IDEA requires that the IEP team include a:
- Special education teacher
- General education teacher
- Representative of the local education agency (LEA); often a special education director or school administrator
- Professional who can interpret evaluation results (e.g., school psychologist, special education teacher)
speech-language pathologist (SLP)
glossary
occupational therapist (OT)
glossary
Did You Know?
During the transition planning process, students should gradually begin assuming more responsibilities and making more of their own decisions regarding their future. Once a student reaches the age of majority in their state, typically age 18, all legal rights for making informed decisions (e.g., consent to release information, medical treatment, financial arrangements, housing) transfer to the student.
age of majority
glossary
For younger students, the IEP team’s membership is often limited to professionals working with the student at school. For transition-aged students, the IEP team is more likely to include additional representatives from agencies and organizations that provide services outside of school. You will learn more about these agencies on the next two pages.
The Transition Coordinator
The transition planning process is typically led by a person who coordinates the many aspects of secondary transition. Ideally, this is a transition coordinator or transition specialist with expertise in this area. The responsibilities of the transition coordinator include:
- Coordinating transition services by developing and sustaining collaborative relationships with outside agencies, service providers, employers, and community organizations
- Assisting in IEP development for transition-aged students
- Developing a timeline to help organize needed activities, including when to initiate contact with outside agencies
- Collecting data and monitoring students’ progress toward transition-related annual goals and long-term postsecondary goals
- Establishing networks of support for families and students
- Coordinating both on- and off-campus employment opportunities for current students
- Providing transition-related information and training for secondary educators
- Advocating for needed changes in school or district transition programs
To fulfill these responsibilities, the transition coordinator requires adequate support and resources, as outlined in the table below.
| Supports | Description |
| Adequate time | Having sufficient time allows the transition coordinator to build relationships necessary for interagency collaboration and to develop supports for students. |
| Flexible schedule | A flexible schedule allows transition coordinators to meet with parents and other participants in the transition planning process at times and locations that are convenient for everyone. |
| Proper training | To understand the district, state, and federal policies that govern the provision and delivery of transition services, transition coordinators need proper training. Many districts and states offer professional development related to transition, and some universities now offer graduate degrees and certificates in transition. |
| Other school personnel | Support from fellow professionals (e.g., school psychologists, counselors, principals) can help transition coordinators fulfill their responsibilities. For example, these individuals might help conduct transition assessments or guide students as they navigate the college selection and application process. |
For Your Information
Although it is ideal to have a transition coordinator on staff, this position does not exist in every high school. When transition coordinators are not available, special educators are charged with managing the transition planning of the students on their caseload, in addition to managing their other teaching responsibilities. Generally, they have neither the time nor the flexibility to sufficiently focus on the wide range of program-level transition-related activities. However, in those instances when teachers do need to fill this role, it is crucial that the special educator be provided with adequate support, knowledge, and training.
Note: For the remainder of this module, the person overseeing the transition planning process will be referred to as the transition coordinator regardless of whether this is a stand-alone position or one held by a special education teacher.
In this interview, Mary E. Morningstar distinguishes between the direct student support provided by teachers and the broader interagency collaboration managed by the transition coordinator. Then, Karen Gross shares the impact a transition coordinator can have on students’ long-term success.
Mary E. Morningstar, PhD
Professor of Special Education
Portland State University
Co-Director of the Transition Coalition
(time: 2:06)
Transcript: Mary E. Morningstar, PhD
One of the things that is important to understand is that special education teachers have a pretty substantial role in terms of transition planning and providing transition services and support. However, they often are not the lead when it comes to interagency collaboration. Teachers do have activities particularly involved in supporting the families and the students that they are case managers for during IEP planning. And they certainly spend quite a bit of their time supporting students to learn the skills needed for the post-school outcomes the students are desiring. And they are also very much involved in supporting their students to take on a more student-centered, student-directed role during transition planning. However, teachers often don’t have the time to devote specifically to the bigger system’s needs often associated with interagency collaboration. And that’s where the role of a transition coordinator often is critical. Transition coordinators tend to be not as focused on working directly with students but are thinking much more and spending more of their time engaging at a systems level. That often includes quite a bit of the work around interagency collaboration. So transition coordinators would spend their time building those relationships with the agencies and with the services outside of school. They would be advocating both within their own administration and with those community agencies for improvements and enhancements related to collaboration, and then they have a pretty substantial role supporting teachers.
Transcript: Karen Gross, EdD
The role and responsibility of a transition coordinator is one of the most important and exciting positions that you can have in a school district. It is a crucial role that an educator plays, and when done well, it can have extraordinary impact in the success of the student, the district, and in the community. So at its core, the responsibility is to assist students with [a] disability, transition from school to postsecondary. And that can be done in living, learning, and earning, which is really employment, education, and independent living. And the way that we do that is by working with students to assist them in identifying what their strengths, preferences, and interests are. So we do that in many different ways. We do a lot of transition assessments with students. We work one-on-one with them to help them identify through career inventories, interest inventories, speaking with them, providing opportunities for them, real-life opportunities through work-based learning, through work experience programs, through different courses that we offer during school, through having the community come in to work with students to provide different opportunities. So there’s several different ways we do that with students.
