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The Journal of Special Education 2014, Vol 47(4) 245 –255 © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022466912456241 journalofspecialeducation .sagepub.com

On the brink of adulthood, most youth aspire to pursue a range of personally important experiences, relationships, and outcomes in the years after high school. Although youth with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities share many, if not all, of these same aspirations for their futures (Wagner, Newman, Cameto, Garza, & Levine, 2005), having a significant disability continues to be a pow- erful predictor of the degree to which desired outcomes will materialize in early adulthood (Carter, Austin, & Trainor, 2012; Grigal, Hart, & Migliore, 2011). For most young people with severe disabilities, valued outcomes in the areas of employment, postsecondary education, community participation, social relationships, and health remain unat- tained or fleeting. Formal transition services and supports were initially advocated (Will, 1984) and subsequently mandated (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, 1990) as a means of reversing the disappointing outcomes experienced by youth and young adults with disabilities. A constellation of coordinated and carefully designed pro- gramming during the final years of public schooling is now recommended for preparing youth to transition seamlessly to adulthood (Kohler & Field, 2003; National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth, 2009). Further- more, recent systematic reviews confirm that an array of

transition practices have some indication of promise or evi- dence of effectiveness (Alwell & Cobb, 2009; Test, Fowler, et al., 2009; Test, Mazotti, et al., 2009).

To individually tailor these services and supports, age- appropriate transition assessment is mandated as a means of identifying which educational practices are most essential for a particular student with a disability. Specifically, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 highlighted the role of assessment within effective transition planning by requiring the individualized education programs (IEPs) of youth to include “appropriate measurable postsecondary goals based on age-appropriate transition assessments related to training, education, employ- ment, and, where appropriate, independent living skills” (§300.320(b)). Indeed, it is now widely acknowledged that meaningful assessment should serve as a cornerstone for

456241 SED47410.1177/0022466912456241 The Journal of Special EducationCarter et al. © The Author(s) 2011

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1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA 2University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA

Corresponding Author: Erik W. Carter, Department of Special Education, PMB 228, Peabody College, 230 Appleton Place, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Transition Assessment and Planning for Youth With Severe Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Erik W. Carter, PhD1, Matthew E. Brock, MA1, and Audrey A. Trainor, PhD2

Abstract

Although federal law now mandates age-appropriate transition assessment as a key component of high-quality transition planning, little research exists to guide educators on what they might learn when undertaking this process. In this study, the authors examined teacher and parent assessments of the transition-related strengths and needs of 134 youth with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities who were eligible for the state’s alternate assessment. The perspectives of teachers and parents regarding the transition-related strengths and needs of particular students often diverged in key ways. Students with severe disabilities were perceived as having a range of transition-related strengths across the nine transition domains. Although a number of transition-related needs were identified by teachers, the transition profiles of individual students within this sample were quite heterogeneous. The authors offer recommendations for strengthening the transition assessment and planning process by incorporating multiple perspectives, and present important directions for future research on transition assessment.

Keywords

transition assessment, transition planning, teacher and parent perceptions, intellectual and developmental disabilities

Article

246 The Journal of Special Education 47(4)

the design and delivery of transition services (Neubert, 2012; Wehman, 2011).

One essential element of high-quality transition assess- ment and planning involves integrating the perspectives of multiple individuals who know a student well and/or who are familiar with the expectations of current or future envi- ronments in which a student participates or will participate (Carter, Trainor, Sun, & Owens, 2009; Karan, DonAroma, Bruder, & Roberts, 2010; Sitlington & Clark, 2007). Proponents advocate this approach because the scope of transition planning is typically broader than other educa- tional planning endeavors, addressing multiple transition domains (e.g., academics, vocational, interpersonal rela- tionships, health), contexts (e.g., classrooms, workplaces, residential placements), time points (in school and post- school), and support systems (e.g., schools, adult agencies, families, community supports). Individual transition plan- ning team members often have different vantage points from which to observe a student, each may hold distinct expectations about the transition domains that are important to address for a student, and/or each may compile differ- ent information about a student’s competence and support needs. Such multi-informant approaches may be particu- larly important when conducting planning for students who have complex communication challenges and may encoun- ter difficulties articulating their own goals, interests, strengths, and support needs. Thus, the reliance on multiple proxy informants may be heightened when transition plan- ning focuses on students with severe disabilities.

Special educators are typically key—and sometimes the dominant—contributors to the transition planning process, drawing upon information learned through their work with the student over time (Shogren & Plotner, 2012; Wagner, Newman, Cameto, Javitz, & Valdes, 2012). However, par- ents and other family members also have invaluable per- spectives to share within the transition assessment and planning framework (Neece, Kraemer, Blacher, & Ferguson, 2009; Powers, Geenen, & Powers, 2009). For example, fam- ily members may have unique opportunities to observe strengths or needs in contexts that are different from school settings. Family members may also share opinions about transition domains in which services and support needs are not anticipated or which they consider not to be appropriate.

Yet, few studies have explored the degree to which fami- lies and school staff are likely to hold similar perspectives on the strengths and needs of individual youth with severe disabilities, and none have explored views regarding the appropriateness of particular transition planning domains. Carter, Owens, Trainor, Sun, and Swedeen (2009) exam- ined the self-determination prospects of high school stu- dents with severe disabilities from the perspectives of teachers and parents. Teachers evaluated the self-determination capacities of youth more favorably than parents, but both aligned in their views of the opportunities youth had to

engage in self-determined behavior at school and home. In their study of students ages 4 to 18, Tasse and Lecavalier (2000) found that although parents and teachers generally aligned in their ratings of some social and behavioral mea- sures, parents rated three types of problem behaviors as more challenging than did teachers. Similarly, Lecavalier, Leone, and Wiltz (2006) found that parents and teachers did not always agree in their views of the presence and severity of the challenging behaviors of children with intellectual disabilities ages 4 to 18. Given the narrow focus of these studies on a single educational domain and the paucity of studies addressing multirespondent transition assessments, additional research is needed to more closely explore the alignment among parents and teachers within transition planning efforts.

A second critical aspect of high-quality transition assess- ment is that it should inform planning teams about the needs and strengths of individual students (Carter, Trainor, et al., 2009; Neubert, 2012). IDEA specifically states that transi- tion services must be “based on the individual child’s needs, taking into account the child’s strengths, preferences, and interests” (34 CFR 300.43(a), italics added). This emphasis on strengths-based assessment approaches affirms that strengths coexist alongside needs in every person, including persons with severe disabilities (Thompson, Wehmeyer, & Hughes, 2010). Yet, relatively few studies have focused on capturing the strengths and capacities of people with severe disabilities, particularly during adolescence and the transi- tion to adulthood (Dykens, 2006; Shogren, Wehmeyer, Buchanan, & Lopez, 2006). Although disability categorical labels are used to indicate the basis of students’ need for extensive supports across multiple domains, it is also likely that individual strengths are evident alongside individual needs. In identifying these strengths and needs, transition assessment and planning should be comprehensive, address- ing multiple dimensions of the lives of students with dis- abilities (Roberts, 2010; Wehman, 2011). Although the IDEA (2004) transition mandates specifically reference the domains of training, education, employment, independent living skills, and community participation, other areas (e.g., self-determination, interpersonal relationships, health) may be equally relevant to transition planning efforts. In fact, broad-based transition planning efforts are needed to ade- quately consider and plan for the range of contexts in which these students are expecting (and expected) to participate after high school. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which students’ transition planning needs are likely to be limited to relatively few areas (e.g., employ- ment and interpersonal relationships) or span across many of these transition domains. Prior studies addressing the transition needs of students with disabilities have each focused narrowly on a limited number of domains, such as recreation/leisure (Kreiner & Flexer, 2009), employment (Turner, Unkefer, Cichy, Peper, & Juang, 2011), social

Carter et al. 247

competence (e.g., Tasse & Lecavalier, 2000), or self-deter- mination (Carter, Owens, et al., 2009). Additional research is needed that examines multiple transition domains within the same sample of students. Third, the purpose of transi- tion assessment and planning is to inform individualized programming (Cobb & Alwell, 2009). One critique of tran- sition programming, however, is that students may be fit into existing programs rather than building programming around the needs of individual students (Hughes & Carter, 2011). Although students with severe disabilities are per- haps among the most heterogeneous groups of students in secondary schools, their school programs may be strikingly similar in scope and design. If students with severe disabili- ties indeed tend to have unique transition profiles, it follows that transition education should be individually tailored to address those individualized needs. However, prior studies have not explored the nature of these profiles among ado- lescents with severe disabilities.

Despite the explicitness of the most recent IDEA transi- tion mandates, empirical guidance regarding what planning teams might encounter when implementing transition assessment processes is sparse. We examined teacher and parent assessments of the transition-related strengths and needs of 134 youth with severe intellectual and develop- mental disabilities who were eligible for the alternate assessment. The following research questions guided our analyses.

Research Question 1: What are the transition-related strengths and needs, according to teachers, of high school students with severe disabilities? Research Question 2: To what extent do transition- related profiles vary across individual students with severe disabilities? Research Question 3: To what extent do parents and teachers share similar perspectives of the transition- related strengths and needs of students with severe disabilities?

Method Participants

Participants were the parents and teachers of high school students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We asked these adult respondents to complete a widely used transition assessment (i.e., Transition Planning Inventory) for 134 focus students with severe disabilities. The focus students were selected because they received special education services under a primary disability cate- gory of intellectual disability or autism, were enrolled in high school, participated in a broader federally funded study focused on promoting employment for adolescents, and were eligible for the alternate assessment in their state.

The average age of students was 18.3 years (SD = 1.8 years, range = 14–22) and the slight majority (50.7%) was male. Most participants (86.6%) were European American, 11.2% were African American, and 2.1% were other race/ ethnicities (i.e., Asian American, Native American). Youth were identified by teachers and in school records as having an intellectual disability (82.1%), autism (1.5%), or both an intellectual disability and autism (16.4%). Students were served across grade levels, including 19.4% who were in 9th grade, 12.7% who were in 10th grade, 26.1% who were in 11th grade, 28.4% who were in 12th grade, and 13.4% who received services in community-based, 18 to 21 pro- grams. More than one quarter of students (26.9%) were eli- gible for free or reduced-price meals, 67.9% of students were not eligible, and information was not available for the remaining 5.2% of students.

Transition assessments for the 134 students were com- pleted by 61 different special educators (i.e., some teachers had more than one participating student on their caseload). Among the teachers for whom demographic information was available, 95.1% reported having regular teaching licensure, 45.9% had a master’s degrees and 1.6% had a doctoral degree, 82.5% were female, and all were European American. Among the 90 parents who returned completed transition assessments, 18.9% reported having completed a graduate degree, 15.6% completed a bachelor’s degree, 23.3% reported having attended some college, and 35.6% reported receiving a high school degree or GED. About four fifths (82.0%) reported that either they or their spouse was currently employed outside the home.

Schools Students attended 26 high schools located within 22 rural, suburban, and urban school districts in a large Midwestern state. Student enrollment at each of the high schools aver- aged 1,342 (SD = 663). About half (46.2%) of these schools enrolled between 1,000 and 2,000 students, whereas 30.8% enrolled fewer than 1,000 students and 23.1% enrolled more than 2,000 students. Average race/ethnicity of students across schools ranged from 0.3% to 66.8% African American (M = 7.5%), 0% to 5.3% American Indian (M = 0.9%), 0% to 13.3% Asian American (M = 3.9%), 14.1% to 98.3% European American (M = 81.58%), and 0.6% to 22.2% Hispanic (M = 6.15%). The percentage of students receiving special education services in each school ranged from 7.6% to 57.0% (M = 15.2%) and those eligible for free/reduced- price meals ranged from 1.2% to 74.1% (M = 21.78%). Diversity and affluence were not evenly distributed across schools. The 7 schools with the highest percentage of minor- ity students (greater than one third of the total student popu- lation) were concentrated in 3 urban school districts. These schools also tended to have higher rates of students eligible for free/reduced-price meals (27.0%–74.1%).

248 The Journal of Special Education 47(4)

Transition Planning Inventory

The Transition Planning Inventory (TPI; Clark & Patton, 1997/2006) is a widely used, 46-item assessment tool used to obtain information about students’ transition-related knowledge, behavior, and skills from the perspectives of school staff, family members, and/or students themselves. The 46 items on the TPI are clustered within nine transition domains: employment (5 items), further education/training (5 items), daily living (6 items), leisure activities (3 items), community participation (6 items), health (6 items), self- determination (5 items), communication (4 items), and interpersonal relationships (6 items). For example, items from the self-determination domain include recognizes and accepts own strengths and limitations, expresses feelings and ideas to others appropriately, and sets personal goals. Items from the community participation domain include knows his or her basic legal rights, participates as an active citizen, and knows how to use a variety of services and resources successfully. For each item, raters are asked to assess the focus student’s current level of competence using a 6-point Likert-type scale (0 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Two additional response options also are available. If raters have insufficient knowledge to assess a student’s level of competence, they can select don’t know. If raters consider an item to be an inappropriate area of planning for the focus student, they can select not appropriate.

Both parent and teacher versions of the TPI also include sections requesting student demographic information (e.g., age, gender, grade, name) and information about antici- pated postschool plans related to employment, postsecond- ary education or training, and living arrangements. Although all versions of the TPI address the same planning areas and domains, it is important to note that some of the correspond- ing items are worded slightly differently. For example, the school version item from the interpersonal relationships domain states “Displays appropriate social behavior in a variety of settings”; on the home version it is written as, “Can say and do the right thing wherever he/she is.” The school version item from the employment domain states, “Recognizes and accepts own strengths and limitations”; on the home version it is written as, “Knows and accepts own strengths and limitations.”

Evidence of the validity and reliability of the TPI has been reported in several sources (Clark & Patton, 1997; Rehfeldt, 2006; Smith, 1995). Psychometric properties were established on a sample of 329 school-based person- nel, 227 parents, and 288 students across 10 states. Internal consistency for individual domains (measured by Cronbach’s α) ranged from .83 to .94 for teachers and from .79 to .92 for parents. Test–retest reliability coefficients ranged from .87 to .98 for teachers and from .76 to .91 for parents (Clark & Patton, 1997). During initial development,

a pool of 250 items was drawn from an examination of state transition guidelines, as well as a review of the professional literature. A panel of faculty experts and practitioners eval- uated initial drafts of the instruments to suggest revisions in wording, structure, and item inclusion, as well as to assess the social validity of the overall instrument.

We conducted reliability analyses with our own sample by calculating Cronbach’s alpha for each TPI domain sepa- rately for educators and parents. Alphas averaged .88 for educators (range = .84–.92) and .82 for parents (range = .58–.90). We also conducted exploratory factor analyses on the data provided by teachers, which showed a unidimen- sional structure for each of the nine domains addressed in the inventory. The variance explained by each of the factors ranged from 57.2% to 81.0% (M = 69.3%), suggesting that the items for each domain shared a substantial amount of common variance.

Procedures Participants were recruited as part of a larger study focused on the employment and community experiences of adoles- cents with disabilities. After obtaining human subjects and district approvals to conduct the study in 34 high schools, we identified project liaisons in each school to assist with par- ticipant recruitment. These liaisons were asked to randomly select students with intellectual disabilities proportional to the total enrollment of the school. In addition, liaisons were asked to invite all students with severe disabilities (i.e., we oversampled students eligible for the state’s alternate assess- ment). Permission forms were mailed home to parents and guardians of identified youth and returned directly to the school liaisons, who then shared with us the names of stu- dents for whom permission had been obtained.

During the spring semester, we distributed assessment packets containing the TPI and three other instruments to special educators who worked with and knew each partici- pating youth. These teachers completed the TPI indepen- dently at a time and location convenient to them. Parent versions of the TPI scale were mailed to the students’ homes and completed forms were returned directly to us. Although some students also completed the TPI, the paper-and-pencil assessment was not considered to be appropriate for most students; thus, youth perspectives are not addressed in our analyses. We told the teachers and parents that we would give them a summary profile based on the information gath- ered using the TPI that could be used as part of the student’s transition planning. We obtained TPIs from all 61 teachers (100%) and 90 parents (67.2%).

Data Analysis We conducted a series of analyses to address our research questions. First, we calculated descriptive statistics to

Carter et al. 249

summarize teachers’ ratings for the 134 students with severe disabilities. We summarized domain-level scores by calculating the mean score for each domain across each group. We made this decision to retain reference to the original 6-point scale on which each item was initially rated to ease interpretation of our findings. We analyzed responses of not appropriate and don’t know separately by calculating the percentage of items receiving these ratings within each transition domain.

Second, we explored the individual transition-related profiles for students with severe disabilities based on all available teachers’ ratings. For each student, we catego- rized scores on individual domains as reflecting primarily strengths, needs, or somewhere in between. We categorized domains as reflecting primarily strengths if the teacher scored the majority of items in a given domain with a rating of 4 or 5. Similarly, we categorized domains as reflecting needs if teachers scored the majority of a given domain with a rating of 0 or 1. For domains reflecting neither clear strengths nor needs, a score of 2 or 3, we categorized the domain as equivocal. This interpretation of scores is gener- ally consistent with the guidance given in the TPI manual (Clark & Patton, 1997), although the developers suggested a dichotomy of high (i.e., 3, 4, or 5) versus low (i.e., 0, 1, and 2). We developed a profile for each student consisting of a list of domains considered to be strengths, needs, and equivocal for that student. We then compared profile pat- terns across all youth with severe disabilities in the study.

Finally, we compared the assessments of teachers and parents for the 90 students with severe disabilities (67.2%) for whom both completed assessments were available. A summary of parent and teacher ratings for this subsample is provided in Table 1. To explore the degree to which teacher and parent ratings were aligned at both the item and domain level, we compared yoked teacher and parent ratings for individual students. We considered parent and teacher ratings to be in alignment if the ratings were identical (e.g., 1 and 1,

not appropriate and not appropriate) or if numerical ratings were within one point (e.g., 2 and 3, 5 and 4). When parent and teacher ratings did not align, we categorized the spe- cific nature of those differences (e.g., one person provided a numerical rating and another reported not appropriate or don’t know). We calculated percentages of both overall alignment and domain-level alignment across the entire group of students with severe disabilities.

Results How Do Teachers View the Transition- Related Strengths and Needs of Students With Severe Disabilities?

As shown in Table 2, teachers tended to rate students with severe disabilities most highly on the domains of leisure activities (M = 3.44), interpersonal relationships (M = 3.01), and communication (M = 2.94). Community partici- pation (M = 2.03) and further education/training (M = 1.90) received the lowest ratings. The variance in numerical rat- ings was similar across domains (SD range = 1.10–1.31).

Teachers tended to score more individual items as not appropriate in the domains of further education/training (58.36% of items), community participation (26.44%), daily living (22.51%), employment (21.04%), and health (20.77%). The individual items most often rated as not appropriate were each from the domain of further educa- tion and training: “knows how to gain entry into GED Program” (77.68%), “knows how to gain entry into college or university” (74.44%), and “knows how to gain entry into vocational/technical school” (68.89%). Teachers assigned the highest proportion of don’t know ratings to items in the domains of health (5.85%), leisure activities (3.48%), and community participation (2.51%). The individual items most often rated as don’t know were from the health domain— “makes informed choices regarding sexual behavior”

Table 1. Parent and Teacher Ratings for Students With Severe Disabilities by Transition Domain.

M (SD) Percentage of items

rated NA Percentage of items

rated DK

Domain Teachers Parents Teachers Parents Teachers Parents

Leisure activities 3.16 (1.29) 3.07 (1.52) 5.93 3.33 3.33 1.11 Interpersonal relationships 2.92 (1.58) 2.98 (1.80) 9.07 11.67 2.59 2.59 Communication 2.74 (1.61) 2.56 (1.83) 9.72 10.09 2.00 1.58 Health 2.40 (1.57) 2.36 (1.82) 22.41 13.52 4.07 4.63 Self-determination 2.31 (1.41) 2.16 (1.52) 9.11 12.22 0.44 4.22 Employment 2.12 (1.46) 1.82 (1.65) 19.11 13.33 0.89 8.00 Daily living 1.88 (1.57) 1.44 (1.70) 22.22 20.74 0.74 1.85 Further education/training 1.25 (1.48) 1.01 (1.53) 65.33 36.44 0.22 5.33 Community participation 1.04 (1.24) 0.72 (1.21) 28.15 25.56 1.67 1.30

Note. NA = not appropriate; DK = don’t know. Data are drawn from 90 teacher–parent pairs.

250 The Journal of Special Education 47(4)

(13.3%) and “knows how reproductive system works” (5.6%)—and the leisure activities domain—“uses setting that provide various types of entertainment” (6.7%).

To What Extent Do Individual Transition Profiles Vary for Students With Severe Disabilities?

Individual transition-related profiles of students with severe disabilities based on teacher ratings (N = 134) were created by categorizing each domain as primarily reflecting strengths (majority of items scored as 4 or 5), primarily reflecting needs (majority of items scores as a 1 or 2), or equivocal ratings (neither majority strengths or weak- nesses) for each individual student. For example, a student might be determined to have needs in the domains of employment, further education/training, and daily living; strengths in the areas of leisure activities, communication, and interpersonal relationships; and equivocal ratings in the domains of health, community participation, and self- determination. We found that 107 of the 134 (79.85%) students with severe disabilities had unique profiles that did not match the profile of any other student in our sample. The most common shared profile—reflected among just 9.0% of students—included no clear strengths or weak- nesses, but only equivocal ratings. No other single profile accounted for more than 4% of the group. None of the students had all nine domains categorized as areas of need, suggesting that no student was viewed entirely in terms of weaknesses. Moreover, the majority of students (67.91%) had at least one domain categorized as reflecting primarily strengths. The number of students for which each domain was categorized as a strength, weakness, or equivocal is summarized in Figure 1.

To What Extent Do Parents and Teachers Share Similar Perspectives of the Transition- Related Strengths and Needs of Students With Severe Disabilities?

We calculated percentage of close alignment between teacher and parent ratings for all 46 individual items, with close alignment defined as either an identical response agreement or a numerical rating differing only by one point on the scale. We made 4,140 item comparisons (i.e., 90 participants × 46 items rated by teacher and parent). Overall, teachers and parents provided similar ratings on less than half (48.0%) of all rated items. There were two primary indicators for divergence in ratings. First, teachers and parents provided numerical ratings that differed by more than 1 point on 24.3% of items. Second, on 21.6% of items, one respondent provided a numerical rating, whereas the other marked not appropriate. Other differences included one respondent providing a numerical rating and the other marking don’t know (3.7% of items), one respon- dent marking don’t know and the other marking not appro- priate (1.2% of items), or one of the re

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