January 16, 2008

Transition- How Do we Get Them Over the Bridge?

I’ve tried to get out of the nonlawyering business since 1998. But the cases that were left to finish, and the two I took in the last 3 years while teaching- all had one thing in common. Transition. The kids who were the focus of these hearings were 16 and over and had no ability to either get a job or go on to some kind of schooling. The school districts all said they were fine. The legal issue, of course, was transition. For the developmentally disabled students, there were job coaches sometimes, work-study programs, and vocational schools. One young man strongly objected to being asked to wash the feces out of the bed sheets in the laundry while sorting the whites from the darks and walked out of the building. My job was to try and find him another job or to have him tolerate rubber gloves and learn to hold his breath. There is something about transition that does not compute in the brains of school staff, even though they’ve been required to write individualized transition plans in IEPs since the 1990s and to prepare our kids for postsecondary education and/or employment. (In such discussions I visualize giving them the soiled bed sheets with excrement all over them!) Transition becomes the ultimate measurement of the success of the school’s programs. If a student does not have the basic academic skills, organizational skills, social skills, self-help skills, and independence in travel and decision-making, then every parent should ask “Why”. In today’s world of high stakes testing, transition means passing the state test. That’s how far away we’ve come from where we need to be. Our kids pass the test but can’t walk around the block. The loudest fights in IEP meetings will be over transition planning and instruction. If an IEP team can’t pawn a classified high school student off onto another state agency for transition skills, they blame the parent or lie and say the child is doing fine and is ready to graduate. I’m not saying all schools do this, but just the ones I know.

In 2006 a family with a 17-year old daughter found me through a series of events I can only attribute to Fate. She had cerebral palsy, multiple learning disabilities, and had never been shopping alone or done any community or family activity alone. She was intelligent but fragile, had no friends, and was a social isolate in every conceivable way. Her parents were terrified about her safety and vulnerability, wanting to protect her from both physical and emotional harm. The school had given her a 1-1 aide in all regular ed classes, never taught her to write, and declared her ready to graduate and attend college when she read at about a 3rd grade level. This is the case I am still trying to finish within the OAL and the sole issue is transition. This will be the first New Jersey case to go to decision on transition, OAL doing every conceivable thing, including breaking its own procedural laws, to prevent the case from being completed. One expects Board attorneys to do what they can for their clients. But when a State agency knowingly breaks its own laws to prevent a decision on transition, one sees the enormity of what is at stake.

In 2005 a family with a 17 year old severely autistic, retarded, and epileptic son kept calling me until I agreed to look at their case. He was extremely violent, and the family had not slept a night through in 11 years. The school district insisted that their only job was to address “educational” needs. They never explained transition to the parents. Even worse, this young man was in a well-respected state research facility that received millions of dollars to do autism research. It falsified records, had unlicensed personnel and warehoused the kid until his seizures become so violent it was evident that they could no longer deny he had epilepsy. Imagine. They knew he had epilepsy, had regressed and lost skills learned in third grade, but refused to acknowledge it to the parents or to seek medical help from outside experts. The young man in now 19 and in a residential school in Kansas.

In 2006, the National Center for Special Education Research published ‘An Overview of Findings From…the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2”. (The contact person is Patricia Gonzalez, 202-219-1011. Email- Patricia.Gonzales@ed.gov.) Some of the findings were:

1. Academic
   1. 77-86% of youth with disabilities had academic scores below the mean across educational subtests.
   2. 14-27% scored more than two standard deviations below the mean on the subtests.
   3. Reading comprehension is the lowest score among all groups.
   4. Vocabulary is the highest score among all groups.
   5. 12-23% of disabled youth score above the mean.
   6. Youth with visual impairment outscore LD students on three measures, scoring the same on three others. Hearing-impaired students score higher than LD students in math calculation, but lower in science and social studies.
   7. White youth score 7-13 points higher on all tests than African American or Hispanic youth.
   8. Low-income households ($25,000 or less) scored lower in all tests.
   9. High parental expectations for future enrollment in postsecondary education increased student achievement from 4-6 points higher as parent expectations rose.
   10. Using a calculator gave a 3-4 point advantage in math tests.
   11. Using American Sign Language or an interpreter lowered scores on some subtests.
       
       
2. Postsecondary Education
   1. The current rate of enrollment of students with disabilities is about half that of the general population.
   2. 5% of youth with disabilities attend postsecondary vocational, business, or technical schools within 2 years of leaving high school.
   3. 9% of youth with disabilities have attended a 4-year college. This is 4 ½ times less than general youth attending college.

      (How do we explain the12-23% of our kids scoring above the mean when only 9% attend a 4-year college? Keep that number in mind as you read these statistics.)

3. Employment after High School
   1. 7 in 10 disabled youth have worked for pay at some time since leaving high school, or 63% less than the same out of school youth in the general population.
   2. Wages for disabled youth increased $1.30 to a current total of $7.30 per hour. However, benefits as part of their compensation package is not common.
   3. Most working youth are happy with their jobs. About 60% employed more than 6 months are promoted, take on more responsibility or receive a pay raise.
   4. African American youth with disabilities have 16% less likelihood of current employment than White, less likely to drive (78% vs. 40%) and have a personal checking account (40% vs. 22 %),
      
      
4. Independence
   1. About 3/4th of disabled youth live with their parents up to 2 years after high school, a rate similar to the general population of youth.
   2. About 2/3rds of disabled youth now drive, where fewer than half drove 2 years before.
   3. 1 in 10 disabled out of school youth participate in government benefit programs, the same as 2 years ago.

This government-funded study is comprehensive and important. Since it was published I have seen no change in federal or state policies. It is the marriage of education with employment and the economy. But it is a bridge that nobody seems willing to cross.