The IEP Transition Goal

The IEP Transition Goal

In 1990, the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) extended their requirement of a Free and Appropriate Education (FAPE) for all children regardless of a disability to include transition planning (Wehman, 5). IEPs must now include formal transition plans that include vocational, educational, and community involvement to facilitate the transition process for individuals with disabilities.  The hope was that this would lessen the vocational gap between those with and those without disabilities.

Your educational liaison, the person in charge of your IEP should meet with you personally to determine your future plans. This would be a good person to invite to your person-centered planning meetings. The IEP Transition Goal should incorporate your likes and dislikes and the vision and action plan you set in your Person-Centered Planning meeting will help your IEP team set a comprehensive transition goal with you.  You should update the transition goal annually and include benchmarks that are appropriate to improve the student's post-school outcomes.   By outlining the specific steps needed to reach your transition goals, the Team increases the likelihood of your success by breaking down the process into small, manageable pieces. Your IEP team will meet with you and your family when you are sixteen, and sometimes earlier if the team feels this is appropriate, and begin discussing your post-graduate plans.

When you attend your IEP meeting, the team will ask you if where you see yourself after high school. Will you attend college or a technical school? Will you pursue full- or part-time employment? Will you attend a day-hab program? Will you live at home, with friends, or in a group home? These questions will drive your transition plan and I urge you to discuss them openly with your Person Centered Planning Team before your IEP meeting because your transition plan will reflect these plans and will have objectives listed in your IEP that will reasonably ensure you accomplish your goals. Once you have established the type of post-secondary activities you want to pursue, share these with your IEP team. You will need to become a strong self-advocate and identify both your goals and the obstacles to those goals so that the team can put supports in place to help you accommodate your disability and achieve your aspirations.

The IEP team can help you identify your strengths and accommodate your weaknesses through formal and informal testing. You can request these tests as part of your three-year re-evaluation process or you can ask for them to be conducted outside of the three-year time-line. We will discuss the types of formal and informal testing in the next chapter, but these measures provide additional data on you and how you learn and work. They will help educate the team about the best way for you to reach your goals and I recommend you request these testing measures as you approach the transition age and discuss them at your IEP meetings as they relate to your transition goals. Doing so will bolster your transitional experience and increase your likelihood of success.  

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Wehman, Paul, Ph.D. Life Beyond the Classroom, Transitions Strategies for Young People With Disabilities. Paul H. Brooks Publishing Company, Baltimore, 2006.