Last month the US Department of
Education (DOE) and other federal agencies hosted the first “national online
dialogue” on how to better prepare students with disabilities for college and
the workforce. The DOE’s blog post about the dialogue, and its role in meeting
the President’s goal of having the federal government hire an additional
100,000 workers with disabilities by 2015, can be found here.
Although the dialogue itself ran
from May 13 to May 27, comments still can be posted on the blog site. Also, if
you visit the DOE’s blog, take a minute to click on the “Join the online
dialogue” link, which will take you to ePolicyWorks (http://www.epolicyworks.org/), a
resource of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy
that you might find valuable.
Ideas to emerge from the dialogue
include:
·
Expand
the number of community college offerings for students with disabilities to
give them a cost-effective, local option for education in case finances and the
nature of their disability preclude them from attending and living at a
four-year college.
·
Include
health care issues on the student’s IEP to help the student formulate a plan
for how to manage these issues as an adult.
·
Improve
communication between local and state agencies involved in helping students
with disabilities make a successful transition to college or the workforce
after high school.
My two cents after thinking
about this issue of transition, and my own experiences after high school: High
school students with disabilities would benefit from a mentoring program in
which they’re connected with current college students, or recent college
graduates, with disabilities, who could provide advice and support on making a
successful transition.
What do you think is critical to
making a successful transition into college? We’re going to be addressing this
issue in an entry that will be posted later this month, so please send me your
comments and feedback in the next few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment