Background
In 1990, when Congress reauthorized and rewrote P.L. 94-142 and renamed the new law the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), they made it mandatory that the students with disabilities and their families be at the center of transition planning for their child’s future. Starting at age 14, students and their families were to be the people to decide what that young man or woman would do, where he would live and what kind of community activities and recreation he would enjoy. All of those transition plans must be the basis of the student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP). When a student wants to go to college, that goal must be reflected in the IEP. Transition activities must not only reflect the courses the student takes, but also development of life skills such as money management, transportation and mobility skills, and everyday skills such as eating, dressing and doing laundry. The Self-Assessment which is included in this text (page 65) has a list of the competencies necessary to be an independent college student. It will help to identify the skills a student has and those that still need to be mastered. Those that are weak or missing can be addressed by the appropriate stakeholders: student, parent or professional.
One way in which IDEIA differs from the old IDEA is the development of a Summary of Performance (SOP) for each graduating high school student in special education. In New York State, the Summary of Performance is called the Student Exit Summary (SES). The purpose of the document is to aid the student and the family in making informed decisions about the future. It Development of the document gives the secondary education professionals an opportunity to review the student’s overall performance and give clear snapshot of the current status of skills, deficit areas and what kinds of strategies or accommodations were successful and which were not.
-
The US Department of Education site Q&A on Secondary Education
-
Revised June 2009 states:
-
A postsecondary student who has identified himself or herself as an individual with a disability and has requested academic adjustments, auxiliary aid or modifications of practices, policies or procedures from an institution of postsecondary education may, consistent with an institution’s documentation requirements, provide the institution with the SOP as part of the documentation used by the institution to determine whether the student has an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity as defined under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504) and/or the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA), and requires academic adjustments as defined in Section 504 regulations at 34 CFR §104.44. Institutions may set their own requirements for documentation as long as they are reasonable and comply with Section 504 and the ADA.