Vermont Needs to Have Better Transition Plans

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20100713/NEWS02/7130305/Vermont-special-education-falls-short-in-review

Vermont special education falls short in review
Vermont schools must do more to help special-education students set post-secondary goals, and the Vermont Education Department needs to ensure this transition planning takes place.
That's one of the conclusions the U.S. Education Department reached in an annual review of Vermont's compliance with federal special-education law. Among other things, the review found Vermont was deficient in ensuring timely initial evaluations of students seeking special-education services and in submitting timely and accurate data to the federal government.

The shortcomings put Vermont in the "needs assistance" category for implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for the second consecutive year. Federal officials ordered Vermont to seek "technical assistance" to remedy the problems or face more dramatic action next year, such as restrictions on federal grant money.

State education officials said Monday that schools in at least a dozen supervisory unions would undergo required training to improve and document transition plans required for special-education students as they near school completion.

Susan Marks, co-director of special education at the Vermont Education Department, said this work will help ensure that outcomes for students as they leave the public education system "are as good as they can be."

About 15 percent of Vermont public-school students qualify for special-education services because of a disability. These range from relatively mild problems to severe handicaps. Transition plans are supposed to help students access jobs, social services and education once they leave school.

State officials say even if the transition plans themselves are not as complete as they should be, the statistics suggest many students are successfully making the shift from school to the adult world. A 2007-08 state report said 87 percent of youths who were on IEPs and no longer in secondary school had moved on to employment and/or post-secondary schooling.

Meanwhile, the state and the federal government have worked out an agreement to improve reporting of student performance, state officials say. Vermont had been deliberately withholding some standardized testing data on the grounds that it could identify students.
"Some of it would get down to identifying a student in third grade with a particular disability not scoring well on the NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program). At a small school in Vermont, everybody knows who everybody is, and it was potentially identifiable," said Mike Bailey, special education data manager for the Vermont Education Department.
Vermont now will send the information to the federal government and rely on it to suppress identifying features under the recently brokered agreement. "Previously they had not committed to do anything like that," Bailey said.

The Vermont Education Department posted information about the federal review and enforcement action on its website Friday. For information, go to http://education.vermont.gov.