Social Inclusion through sports for children with intellectual disabilities

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DEAF EDUCATION AND BRIDGING SOCIAL CAPITAL; A THEORETICAL APPROACH

CHRISTIAN P. WILKENS AND THOMAS P. H E H I R

WILKENS IS A DOCTORAL STUDENT, HARVARO GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, CAMBRIDGE, MA. HEHIR IS PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION.

HE AUTHORS use elements of social capital theory to explore the rap- idly changing landscape of deaf education in America. They suggest that the formation of relationships, and networks of relationships, between deaf students and adults has a value that often goes undetected or un- derappreciated in deaf education. The authors point out that social capital theory, as applied to deaf education, generates a number of po- tentially productive areas for improving outcomes among deaf students, and for future research in the field. The article includes discussion of a number of positive steps to promote bridging social capital among deaf students.

fears will predominate if its children are brought up in com[>letcly hearing-ori- ented wodds. The tteaf child who does not know any deaf adults is a tragic fig- ure, one who has no roots and no chance of devek)ping a positive Deaf identity'. This child is all too likely, in the minds of some, to accept the hearing wodd's judgment and condemnation of the Deaf as medical anomalies— rather than people—who are lacking or incomplete.

Deaf children have always heen at risk of social isolation from their hear- ing peers, and from the hearing adult world around them. So, too, have deaf children often been at risk of getting a substandard education. Outcomes for deaf students, broadly considered, have persistently lagged behind those of their hearing peers. As a result, re- formers and educators have heen tin-

One stoH' widely .shiirctl within the American Deaf community, probably apocr\phal. is that of a little hoy whose parents find him cr>'ing inconst)Iably one day after school. They ask him why he is ciying, and he replies that he is afraid to die. His mother, unsettled and a little apprehensive, asks him why in the world he is afraid, since— after all—he's a little boy. and has a long and happy life ahead of him. The boy replies that he is positive that he will die before he grows up because he is deaf, and he has never met any deaf adults. Another version of this story has the boy convinced that, instead of dying, he will become hearing as he grows up (Mindel & Vernon, 1987).

In either version, the story illustrates the sort of misunderstanding of deaf- ness, and the social isolation of deaf children, that the Deaf community

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DEAF EDUCATION AND BRIDGING SOCIAL CAPITAL

kering with their approaches for as long as schools for the deaf have existed—a period now approaching two centuries in the United States (Baynton, Gannon, & Bergey, 2007).

In the present article, we use ele- ments of social capital theory to ex- plore the rapidly changing landscape of deaf education in America, and to suggest what we believe are positive steps that could be taken to improve education for deaf students in the United States. We believe that the so- cial capital framework we present here helps to illuminate and clarify some of the more complex features of educa- tional reform for deaf students, and as well generates a number of productive areas for future research in the field. Social capital theory posits that human relationships, and networks of rela- tionships, have a value that often goes undetected or underappreciated in education. Human relationships rely, at their most basic and profound levels, on communication—which, for deaf students, is of overriding concern.

Deaf Education and Relational Networks Communication has been at the heart of deaf education from the beginning, since by it students connect with the world and form the sorts of social net- works that are essential for acquiring access to information, gaining em- ployment, and finding satisfaction in community life. Yet debates over com- munication with deaf children have never been ruled by empiricism alone; power, ideology, and politics have tangled over what sort of ap- proaches "should" be used with deaf children, and what sorts of eventual outcomes the field ought to seek. Ex- cellent historical reviews of the com- munication debates can be found in Baynton (199H), Branson and Miller (2002), and Lane (1992).

There is no broad consensus on

what kind of communication modal- ity works "best" with deaf students. Gallaudet Research Institute (GRl) data (2005) indicate that "auditory/oral only" approaches are currently used with 48% of deaf and hard of hearing children in the United States, "sign and speech" approaches with 40%, and "sign only" approaches with just 11%.

Philosophical and educational de- bates over deaf education gained legal and moral weight with the enactment of Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975- While it secured rights for many deaf people, PL. 94-142 and later revi- sions of disability law and education policy made explicit the concept that deaf people were disabled—a deeply divisive issue within the field (Bran- son & Miller, 2002; Corker, 1998; Jankowski, 1997; Lane, 2002). PL. 94-142 also accelerated a shift of deaf children out of special schools that was already well under way O. Cohen (1994) and Stinson & Antia (1999) re- poaed that by the mid-1990s, 91.1% of deaf students were being educated in some capacity in their local schools. Moores (2006), using data sets from GRI's Annual Survey of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Youth, con- firmed an enrollment decline of more than 60% nationally at special schools or centers for deaf children between 1970 and 2000.

The physical location of schooling provided to deaf students matters, be- cause in tandem with communication modality, it affects the range of peers and adults with whom students may interact and form relational networks. Moving out of special schools means that deaf students are exposed to fewer deaf peers, and—depending on school type—fewer deaf adults. As we comment below, this is a serious prob- lem that must be addressed.

Technology has also rapidly changed the social worlds of deaf children. Per-

haps the most educationally and so- cially significant technological change for deaf children has been the advent of cochiear implants, first approved for use in humans in the United States by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 1984. The best estimate of current cochiear implant prevalence appears to be 11.2% among deaf chil- dren nationally, though this varies by region, from 7.3% in the West to 13.1% in the South (GRI, 2005).

Though consensus in the field has yet to form on precise educational "best practice" with deaf children who have cochiear implants, the devices require, a priori, some version of the auditory/oral educational approach— which was, if only briefiy, declining in popularity among educators of deaf students when cochiear implants were approved in 1984. It is equally clear that deaf children using cochiear implants present distinct educational challenges and opportunities, com- pared with deaf children who do not use the devices (Blamey et al., 2001; Hammes, Novak, Rotz, Willis, & Ed- mondson, 2002).

Notably, there has been at least one point of stability with respect to the social and educational experiences of deaf children over the past several decades: their families. Researchers have long known that most deaf children (more than 90%) grow up in mixed households, that is, ones in which the parents are hearing (Braden, 1994), and further, that very few deaf children (less than 4%) are exposed to competent, consistently visual language models at home or at school—even those children who at- tend residential or day schools for the deaf. Though researchers have de- bated the exact prevalence level for years (Moores, 2001), recent trends in genetics and preventative medicine do not seem likely to alter the frac- tionally small proportion of deaf chil-

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dren who have other deaf family members any time in the near ftjture (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004; Schein & Delk, 1989). Even households that at- tempt to learn American Sign Lan- guage (ASL) for use with their deaf children are learners with their chil- dren, and tend to use various gestural pidgins (Braden, 1994). Worse, most educators of deaf children are them- selves hearing—and tend either to lack ASL fluency or to use communica- tion systems that compromise gestural intelligibility (Kluwin, 1981; Luetke- Stahlman, 1988; Mayer & Lowenbraun, 1990).

Nonexistent, ad hoc, or emerging language skills among family members and educators who work with deaf children present major challenges for the development of social interactions. How can deaf children, who often do not have good language models at home, possibly form either wide or deep relational networks? Further, if most of those same children also lack good language models at school, how will those networks ever form? We believe that current trends toward greater inclusion of deaf children in traditional public schools, and toward increasing early-age cochlear implant use, underscore an urgent need for ed- ucational institutions to understand the basis of social capital formation, and to deliberately help build success- ful relational networks between deaf students and deaf adults.

Deaf Education and Social Capital Communication is fundamental to how human minds are constructed, how culture manifests, and the identi- ties children and adults develop (Bar- rett, 2002). The available range of communication choices, as many parents have understood them, has typically come down to either oral or signed language systems. The distinc-

tion between the two has often yielded differential access to human, cultural, and social capital; deaf children who learn oral or written English gain ac- cess to the human, cultural, and social capital attendant on the English-using community, while deaf children who learn ASL gain access to the human, cultural, and social capital of the Deaf world (Lane, Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996; Padden & Humphries, 1988). Many parents, family members, and educators have made decisions about language—and modality use—with deaf children based on implicit or ex- plicit calculations of the sorts of capi- tal to which they want deaf children to have access.

It is clear that the choices families make about language and communica- tion for deaf children have an impact on how (and with whom) their chil- dren will be able to socialize as they go through life. There has been, to date, very little empirical work on the rela- tive value of these social interactions to deaf children themselves—it is almost as if discussions of language with deaf children have been entirely surren- dered to the ideological debates over "oral versus manual." We believe this is a serious gap in the field, and propose that it is both possible and necessary to quantify the value of social capital ac- cruing to deaf children as a conse- quence of decisions about language and education.

Deafchildren, like any children, be- gin to form relationships with others at very early ages. However, they face socialization challenges unique to the communication impacts of deafness. One frequently observed dilemma for deaf children is that, unless they are among the 3 % ^ % of deaf students who grow up witb a fluently signing Deaf parent, they do not share a com- m o n language with their parents, their neighbors, or their community (Mitchell & Karchmer, 2004). The so-

cialization of deaf children has histori- cally happened—and for most chil- d r e n , still happens—withi n school (including preschool) contexts (Ram- sey, 1997; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978). Thus, a look at the outcomes of socialization and social network formation by deaf children at school makes conceptual sense and provides a grounding for understanding s o m e of the cost-bene- fit analyses that parents and educators of deaf children ultimately must make with respect to communication.

Social theorists have long pointed out that differences exist b e t w e e n people in the resources to which they have access based on relational net- works (Bourdieu , 1986; Coleman, 1988; Portes & Landolt, 1996; Putnam, 2000); such networks lie at the founda- tions of social capital formation. Robert Putnam distinguished two basic types of social capital emerging from rela- tional networks: bonding and bridging. Putnam posited that bonding social capital consists of a set of resources ac- cessed through relatively direct reci- procity within a relational network. Bridging social capital, on the other hand, was conceptualized as resources accessed through relational networks outside one's immediate social milieu.

Bridging social capital, the type we focus on in the present article, is not necessarily reciprocal, but more often depends on informal communication, social networks, and general relational trust, such as that found between coworken;, parents and teachers, or broad-based coalitions and organiza- tions. Bridging social capital connects socially heterogeneous groups, and is widely understood to have extensive benefits accruing to the individual; perhaps Putnam's most widely cited finding was that joining a social organi- zation reduces one's chance of dying in a given year by as much as half!

A n u m b e r of researchers have found that social network formation in

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school—or the failure of such net- works to form—is strongly associated with student attainment and success, particularly for students who are not of the majority (G. Cohen & Steele, 2002; Stanton-Salazar, 1997,2001; Valenzuela, 1999)- And it Is during the school years that critical social networks are formed by deaf students—regardless of com- munication modality.

In 1992, the U.S. Department of Ed- ucation issued a guidance paper recog- nizing just this reality. The guidance strongly urged that school-based pro- grams for deaf and hard of hearing stu- dents plan for the "social, emotional, and cultura! needs [of deaf students], including opportunities for peer inter- actions and communication" (para. 10). Clearly, some sense has existed at the national level that opportunities for socialization in school play a posi- tive role in the education of deaf chil- dren. One of the major theories driving the guidance from the Department of Education was that positive socializa- tion could lead to the development of useful individual-level social capital (Everingham. 2001). We could not agree more.

We believe that the conscious, delib- erate promotion of bridging social capital among deaf youth is one of the most critical needs in deaf educa- tion today.

Further, we believe that the need for the deliberate promotion of such social capital among deaf youth cuts across seemingly unbridgeable divides within the field. After all, much more important to each individual than com- munication style or cochlear implant status are the real-world outcomes at- tained by each deaf child: finding and keeping friends, getting a job, connect- ing witb community resources, going to college, and having a rich and re- warding recreational or family life.

We believe that, for deaf children, tbis conception of bridging social cap- ital as a valuable resource can be help- ful in the promotion of positive school and life outcomes, Specifically, increased levels of bridging social cap- ital have been associated with

• increased trust, broader social networks, and stronger norms of reciprocity (Bronfenbrenner, Moen, & Garbarino, 1984)

• lower teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates (Sampson, Morenofî, & Earls, 1999)

• fewer teenagers involved in vio- lent crime, homicide, or suicide (Limber & Nation, 1998)

• fewer behavioral and emotional problems (Runyan et al., 1998).

• greater scbool attainment and achievement levels (Putnam, 2000)

• increased parental engagement in scbools (Coleman, 1988)

As James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer (1987) pointed out, one cannot understate "the importance of tbe em- beddedness of young persons in tbe enclaves of adults most proximate to them, first and most prominently tbe family and second, a surrounding com- munity of adults" (p. 94). Given tbat many deaf cbildren experience tbeir scbool as a kind of "second family," tbe urgency of building social capital witb tbem becomes perhaps even more significant.

We should also note that the recent proliferation of eariy-age cochiear im- plant use is not yet well studied or un- derstood; it may be tbat these deaf students who have received implants are able to gain access to various levels of capital in both the hearing anä Deaf worlds. Some excellent recent field- work examining the socialization of deaf students who have cochiear im- plants—^in particular, Bat-Cbava and

Martin (2002), Bat-Chava, Martin, and Kosciw (2005), and Christiansen and Leigh (2002)—has suggested tbat implants may belp improve deaf stu- dents' communication and socializa- tion skills. As well, there is some international evidence tbat the his- toric communication dicbotomy (oral vs. manual) faced by families and in- stitutions may not be absolute or per- manent, and tbat families may be becoming more pragmatic than ideol- ogy driven. Gunilla Preisler (2007) has noted rising demand among cochiear implant users for rigorous instruction in signed language systems in a major longitudinal study of deaf cbildren with cocblear implants in Sweden. Kristina Svartholm (2007), exploring the same trend, indicated that

parents of children with cochiear im- plants seem to be choosing schools with a signing setting to a larger ex- tent than before. These parents want their children to develop bilingual- ism in Swedish (spoken and written) and Swedish Sign Language . . . . The special schools are now seeing a number of older students who have a greater need for sign language than first expected when their parents chose local school placement among hearing children, (p. 137)

The explanation offered by Preisler (2007) and Svartholm (2007) echoes tbat of Wald and Knutson (2000), wbo found that deaf students, with or witb- out implants, place extremely bigh value on bicultural identities—tbey will always be deaf, but want access to as much information about tbe deaf and bearing worlds as possible. Not anywbere near being tools that pro- vide perfect access to auditory input, and far from reducing demand for access to a rich Deaf culture, it may be tbat cochiear implants provide a new starting point for families consid-

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ering communication options, begin- ning not with the current either/or di- chotomy but with much more robust discussions of when and how.

Svartholm's (2007) study of Swedish schoois for the deaf, though difficult to generalize to the United States, makes a forceful argument for the promotion of bridging social capital with deaf stu- dents. Using the concept of linguistic domains (Fishman, 1965,1972), Svarth- olm points out that language develop- ment takes place across a wide variety of settings—from informal, relatively simple family and friendship settings to the more formal and complex settings in academic study or professional life. She argues that promoting success among deaf students, with and without cochlear implants, means providing ac- cess to the vocabulary' and norms of the widest possible variety of linguistic domains; we provide a number of sug- gestions for doing so in the American context below.

Further, there is at least some evi- dence given by both Preisler (2007) and Svartholm (2007) that students with cochlear implants struggle to form peer or adult relationships in school through spoken language, and that many cochlear implant users (and their family members) rely on signed languages for detailed or ab- stract information, and for the cre- ation and sustenance of friendships in and outside tif school. Though Preisler and Svartholm's studies did n<H ditectly address the question, it may be that the relational networks of cochlear implant users turn out to be entirely distinct from those of nonusers; perhaps the implants fa- cilitate oral language development sufficient for the kinds of brief but necessary relational network forma- tion essential for bridging social cap- ital, while implant users also rely on signed languages for bonding social capital.

Promoting the Formation of Bridging Sociai Capitai: Some Recommendations Start at the Secondary Level There is little cause for compiacenc>' at any program, level, or school for deaf children, regardless of structure or stu- dent composition. But since bridging social capital is particularly vital for stu- dents making the transition out of sec- ondary school and into the new (and often tjuite unfamiliar) wt)rlds of col- lege, work, or other indepentient living situations, we think it most appropri- ate to begin at that level (Briggs, 1997). Secondary programs should seek to bridge the divide between colleges and their students, and employers and their students, as early as possible.

Improve Ties Between Schools and Programs for Deaf Children Currently, many parents and families of deaf children face extensive either/or decisions about how their children will be educated—often from very early ages. One parent involved in rhc Na- tional Parent Project and Survey ex- pressed a sentiment common among those trying to navigate the currently near-labyrinthine systems of services for deaf children:

It just seems to me that there's so many people, you know, that have in thtir own mind what is the right way to educate or the right method of communication and that's part of what they're tiying to pass on to par- ents . . . instead of making something available and saying, "OK, these are the things that are available, these are the things that are used, and this is where you can find out about them." (Meadow-Orlans, Mertens, & Sass- I.ehrer, 2003, p. 22)

In what is perhaps the most disap- pointing feature of the current era of

deaf education, schot)ls and prfigrams are often set up in direct competition with each other for deaf students—in what is often widely understood to be a struggle for survival. Traditional res- idential schools for the deaf, for ex- ample, have often been unable or unwilling to include students with cochlear implants—or to develop new programming that meets their needs, just as local public school districts have historically struggled to educate deaf students who use ASL (Chris- tiansen ik Leigh, 2002; Francis, Koch, Wyatt, & Niparko, 1999; Johnson, 2004). All too frequently, schools do not work together to construct an ap- propriate range of educational op- tions for children. Instead, schools and programs have frequently insisted on "package deals" in which students and families must pick residential, day, or inclusive education programs sepa- rately and exclusively. This problem, we fear, has only been accelerated by the recent rise of inclusion and early- childhood cochlear implantation— both of which could antl shoiiki be stimuli for the creation of new pro- grams, and new cooperation be- tween schools—but have all too often devolved into unhelpful strug- gles to maintain the status quo in the face of profoundly changing student populations.

Instead, the deaf education system needs to develop rf)bust placement options that, for example, allow deaf children to get solid academic prepa- ration in one placement and develop strong social and relational ties to deaf peers and adults around them, perhaps in another placement. As Svartholm (2007) indicates, students with cochlear implants may need ex- pert speech and language services in one setting and academic instruction in another, while their families may want their children to be able to con- nect with a robust ASL-using commu-

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nity as well. Right now, such options are difficult, if not entirely impossible, for families to construct. Schools and programs for deaf children absolutely must commit to forging new relation- ships (and new flexibility) built less around institutional ideologies or pro- grammatic mandates and more on a commitment to promoting the best possible outcomes among deaf chil- dren and families.

Increase Deaf Students' Access to Working Deaf Adults The American Deaf community has long supported increased access for deaf students to Deaf adults, who are seen as both skilled communication partners and positive role models. Ac- cess to Deaf adults in the context of school is thought to combat the isola- tion often felt by the deaf student in traditional public schools, and can also provide a kind of positive "role model" for the residential deaf stu- dent. Perhaps just as important, ac- cess to Deaf adults can help deaf students form relational networks by expanding the number and type of people deaf students know and are able to interact with—in a sense, by facilitating social capital formation (Padden & Humphries, 1988, 2005). Social capital, as we know, is to a large extent driven by opportunities to communicate and form relational networks.

Because residential schools for the deaf employ much larger numbers of deaf people than do traditional public schools (Janikowski, 1997), increasing deaf students' access will be an easier task for residential schools for the deaf than for inclusive education programs or oral schools. Further, deaf students attending residential schools often have deaf adult activity supervisors, coaches, and residence hall advisers to whom they can have access during af-

ter-school hours (Cohen, 1994). Yet re- cent enrollment declines at residential schools nationwide have threatened their very existence, and many have closed their doijrs entirely (Motares, 2006). We believe it would be tragic for deaf children if these institutions did not find ways to reinvent themselves, ciuickly, while better meeting the needs of a rapidly changing population of deaf children. Schtxils and programs that employ large numbers of deaf adults must reach out to other schools and programs, of all types, and de- velop relationships with the pro- fessionals and children who do not necessarily participate in classes within their walls.

We see vast reserves of valuable so- cial networks at residential schools for the deaf, and in day schools or pro- grams for deaf children that employ sizeable numbers of deaf adults. It is vi- tal, we believe, for deaf children of all sorts to have access to these deaf adults—and there are a number of ways the logistics could be managed. From after-school, weekend, or sum- mer programming, to coteaching, guest lecturing, career fairs, and job shadowing, a full range of options ex- ist that could expand the contact deaf students have with deaf adults. Here, creativity and a willingness to over- come traditional boundaries are ab- solutely needed—and can only pay dividends in the ongoing fight against the isolation so prevalent among deaf youth.

Bring Parents of Deaf Children Together With Other Parents Increasing parental engagement in ed- ucation is an explicit goal of the Indi- viduals With Disabilities Education Act. One mechanism for doing so is Parent Training information Centers (PTIs: also known as Community' Parent Re-

source Centers, or CPRCs). Each state has at least one such center. PTIs are funded under IDEA, and their mission includes educating and connecting parents of students with disabilities, in- cluding students who are deaf. Yet many parents of deaf children still have limited access to other parents of deaf children (Hintermair, 2006; Luterman, 1999: Luterman & Kurtzer-White, 1999; Meadow-Orlans et al., 2003; Tolland, 1995). It also seems likely that many parents of deaf children do not have strong ties to traditional parent-group structures from which they and their children could benefit—though this has yet to be studied to any extent; an emerging area of interest will be whether and how well parents of deaf students in inclusive settings are inte- grated into the parental networks of their schools, whether disability fo- cused or otherwise.

We feel that increasing the access that parents of deaf children have to traditional parent groups could be ex- tremely valuable. For example, recent research shows that extensive edu- cational benefits accrue from the re- lational ties parents are able to forge among themselves (Kahlenberg, 2003; Rothstein, 2004). Parental group par- ticipation has been found to raise the educational aspirations and grade expectations of parents for their chil- dren and to increase parental auton- omy and perceptions of support, parental emotional .support for their children, available resources and learn- ing experiences fijrchildren, and direct parent participation in school activi- ties (Rosenzweig, 2001). Further, the greater the interaction parents of deaf children can have with each other, the greater the likelihood that families will gain access and exposure to a variety of programming, educational, and technical supports that are uniciue to the needs of their children.

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Support Deaf Students' Participation in Activities of All Types One of the most prescient lessons of current trends toward inclusion, and of rising cochiear implant use among deaf chiklren, is that many deaf children feel isolated from their peers, and from the adults who surround them—even tliough hearing lo.ss seems not to be the overriding factor in their isolation (Cappeli, Daniels, Durieux-Smith, Mc- Grath, ¿c Neuss. 1995; Scheetz, 1993; Stinson & Kluwin, 1996; Tvingstedt, 1993). This is damaging at a number of levels, particularly since it is known that student participation in activities is a major predictor of positive school outcomes {Kluwin, McKjres, & Gaus- tad, 1992; Stewart & Ellis, 2005; Stinson & Antia, 1999). Social isolation is, by definition, one i)f the major barriers to .social capital formation of all kinds. Conscious and deliberate planning for deaf student participation—and delib- erate recruitment of deaf students by clubs, organizations, and w(jrk sites that offer internships or job-shadowing opportunities—can and should help to combat such isolation. Some mecha- nisms to do this may be as simple as |')roviding after-school busing so that students can get home, identifying and recruiting parents or other adults to coach or lead groups, or providing technical support to inclusive educa- tion programs that want to include deaf students in their activities.

To return to the story that began the present article: One of the most pro- found responsibilities shared by par- ents and educators of deaf children is to remove the isolation that many of these children feel—from adults, from their peers, and from the rich and vi- brant hearing and deaf wodds of which they can he members. As children grow and mature, it is common for them to wonder about the roles they

play, their identities, and their "fit" in the varieties of deaf and hearing wodds to which they will have access. Deaf children need access to hearing and deaf adults alike; it is a lonely world for anyone to feel like "the only one" of any type—and with ever-increasing numbers of deaf professionals, ath- letes, technicians, and leaders, it would be a lost opportunity- not to connect them with youth. A gotxl example of progress towarcis this goal is the re- cently created Rochester After School Academy (RASA), at the Rochester School for the Deaf, which brings together deaf children from all over the city for academic, recreational, and social after-school activities 4 days per week. (Information on RASA can be found at http://www.rsdeaf.org/ enhancement academic.as p.)

Better Prepare Deaf Children for College and Work Overall, deaf studcnt.s in the United States are underprepared academi- cally for college (Menchel, 1995) and work (Rusch & Chadsey, 1998), and there are large cultural gaps between the K-12 world and postsecondary or vocational life (Neumark, 2007). Deaf adults are consequently underem- ployed. Deaf adults in the United States demonstrate lower labor force participation and education attain- ment rates than their hearing coun- terparts—even those with similar academic or vocational skills (Cooper, 2003; Crammatte. 1987; I.ane, 1992). We believe that one of the overriding factors in deaf adult underemploy- ment has its roots in low levels of academic achievement among deaf children (Leigh ik Power, 2004) and a lack of structural and relational conti- nuity between secondary education and the (often quite different) worlds of college and work (Bowe, 2003; Punch, Hyde, & Creed, 2004). Better

academic preparation and stronger transition programming are crucial components in increasing the social capital of deaf children. The opportu- nities schools have to build relational network.s—and, consequently, social capital—among deaf students will re- main stunted until academic achieve- ment is greatly increased.

To this end, we believe that the re- form efforts of the No Child Left Be- hind Act (RL, 107-110) are a positive first step. While there are justifiable concerns about both current levels of resources and capacity (see Moores, 2005a), we feel that a focus on data- driven decision making, coupled with a prioritization of academic outcomes, has long been missing from the field— and can ultimately only help deaf students. To that end we endorse the suggestions of Moores (2005b), who pointed out a need for more consis- tent assessment and reporting of deaf students' academic achievement na- tionally, improved and mijre consis- tent training of teachers of the deaf (and, for that matter, certification re- quirements of teachers (jf the deaf), more (and greater dissemination of) research on "best practice" with deaf children engaged in challenging curric- ula (Marschark, 2001), and improved and more consistent interpreter train- ing (La Bue, 1998).

Finally, a great deal more must be done to strengthen the ties between K-12 schools and the colleges or em- ployers with which deaf students ma- triculate. Among the most uncertain times in a student's life, the initial postsecondary years yield decreased contact with supportive adults, de- creased legal protections, and often decreased influence of immediate family and caretakers (Steere, Rose, & Cavaiuolo, 2007). Without improved ties between institutions, even the best transition planning in the world

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