Secondary Transition: Helping Students with Disabilities Plan for Post-High School Settings

Transcript: David Test, PhD

On the one hand, secondary transition is deceptively simple. It’s simply preparing students to achieve their post-school goals. The problem is that, in practice, it really involves everything that goes on around a student in high school. There are basically five big chunks that the taxonomy organizes the information around. One is on student-focused planning, one is on student development, one is on interagency collaboration, one is on family involvement, and one is around program structures.

Program structures, that’s the policies and procedures that a school has to have or a school system has to have in place to make sure that all the other four pieces work well. That often involves resources. It means hiring the right personnel and doing the professional development and technical assistance and coaching to help teachers learn about the transition planning process and be able to do it correctly.

Students-focused planning is really around helping students to become part of the transition planning process, from assessment to stating their goals and post-school goals. Anytime you plan for a student’s future, they need to be part of it. I don’t think anybody would wanna have someone else plan their future and then tell them what it is. I think we’re all pretty much want to be able to say we’re in charge of planning our own future.

Student development really is about student-skill development. It’s about teaching kids skills, whether it’s algebra, geometry, history, vocational skills, social skills, leisure skills. That’s what the majority of high school is all about is teaching kids skills. We often think about just academic skills, but for all kids, and kids with disabilities in specific, it’s important to also teach skills that aren’t necessarily academic but may be employment related or related to what they need to live independently once they leave high school.

Family involvement involves helping families learn about the transition planning process, helping them learn about what resources are available in the community, helping families learn how to advocate for those resources, and helping families be part of the whole process.

Interagency collaboration can’t be done just by schools. You need outside agencies. You need the business community. You need families. You need everybody that’s going to be there for the rest of the kid’s life after they leave school. They’re going to be out in the community much longer than they are in high school, so it’s good to get the agencies working together and knowing what’s coming.