special education

Planning I

Transition

Children with disabilities have many issues and challenges that limit their ability to learn and understand things like others. The Individuals with Disabilities Education and

Improvement Act ( IDEA 2004), is a federal law enacted in 1975 to make sure that students with disabilities can receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE) and includes transition services to help them move from school to work, adult education and services, independent living, and community participation. Our special education teachers in school write these services in the individual education plan (IEP). Post-school goals are written before developing the remainder of the IEP to make sure that academic experiences can support both the educational purposes and post-school goals of students with disabilities. IDEA requires agencies providing or paying for transition services to be involved in planning and providing transition services (Povenmire-Kirka, Diegelmanna, Crumpa, Schnorrb, Testa, Flowersa, and Aspe, 2017).

CIRCLES

One research-based model that schools can use to implement interagency collaboration effectively is CIRCLES. The CIRCLES model of interagency cooperation, which successfully applied for four years in 12 school districts, addressed many of these challenges and suggestions. According to Povenmire-Kirk et al., (2017), students with disabilities who went through CIRCLES experienced higher levels of self-determination and participation in their IEP meetings. CIRCLES makes the work of both school and agency staff more effective and efficient. The model is a general theory of change built on collaboration theory and self-determination theory. Povenmire-Kirk et al. (2017) stated that when interagency collaboration occurs in partnership with teaching, students self -determination skills, student involvement, and IEP meetings will increase. Implementing the model in the school district will lead to improved in-school and post-school outcomes for students with disabilities.

CIRCLES aims at students with disabilities who may need support from multiple adult service providers to experience successful post-school outcomes. Transition planning begins at age 14. The program will serve all the students with disabilities in our program, age 14 and up. Each student’s individual needs will be met through three-level teams. The three units are the Community Level Team, School-Level Team, and the IEP Team. The overarching Community Level Team (CLT) consists of administrators and supervisors of each of the adult service providers and outside agencies that might be able to provide support for transition from

High school to adult life. This team includes the Texas workforce and the Department of Social Services( Spindletop services/Health Department). As a transition specialist, I will organize the team with the help of the special education director. The School-Level Team (SLT) is what makes includes direct service providers such as counselors, educational diagnosticians, and related services representatives. The SLT will meet with the students once a month and listen to them address post-school goals in the areas of transition, specifically: postsecondary education or training, employment, and independent living. The SLT brings adult agency representatives together to meet directly with students and their families. The IEP team is the last level in the CIRCLES multilevel approach, where the special education teachers take the minutes and decisions made at the SLT back to the IEP meeting and write the transition component base on the services agreed upon at the SLT (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017).

Planning II

Postsecondary education is a primary transition goal for the majority of secondary school students with disabilities, and completion of postsecondary education meaningfully improves an individual’s chances of securing meaningful employment and other positive adult outcomes ( Talapatra, Roach, Varjas, Houchins, and Crimmins, 2018). An informative meeting is scheduled to evaluate the CIRCLES approach. The stakeholder, in this case, will be students with disabilities, parents, special education instructors, administrators from the three schools in the district, the counselors from the Junior and High schools, the director of the curriculum, the special education director, CTE teachers, representatives from Texas Workforce and Spindletop.

All the stakeholders are vital to the program. The success of CIRCLES depends on networking and collaboration between agencies and school personnel, communication about services, empowering students, and parents by having them lead the meetings and helping change students’ lives. The school district leaders and administrators need to be present in case there will be changes in policies and practices.

Planning III

The planning team discusses the goals and vision for the future of each student with disabilities. The student and parents with SLT plan the school, work and community experiences needed to reach the student’s goals. The program evaluation depends on following up after the SLT meeting. The follow-through and what happens to students after they leave special education and the K-12 public school system is often quite different from what the school had planned (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017). For the program to be successful, there is a need to prepare teachers, students, and families for the SLT meeting. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, I will examine the perceptions of the students’ preparedness to transition out of high school. A questionnaire will be available after SLT meetings where the students answer questions about their understanding of readiness, and Parents will respond about their perception of their child’s preparedness. Also, the interagency will evaluate the extent of the collaboration across the different agencies.

I will shed light on agency representatives, teachers, parents, and students all lack an understanding of services available and the requirements and limitations of each. The meeting is to discuss the implementation of CIRCLES and have panel discussions and meet-and-greet opportunities to prevent information gaps and allow for clarification and understanding. Such

information sharing between agencies and schools, in particular, must be an ongoing process by necessity due to the continually changing landscape of legislation, policies, procedures, staff, and students (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017).

Planning IV

The agenda will include the following. Introduce CIRCLES, a new model for interagency collaboration in transition planning. Discuss the three levels of teams, working together to identify specific post-school goals for students with disabilities, and developing a series of steps to help each student achieve them (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017).

There is still a need for transition planning even though post-school results for students with disabilities have progressed in the past ten years, students with disabilities again consistently experience poor outcomes in the areas of education, employment, and independent living when compared to their peers without disabilities. Watch a video about the CIRCLES process about ten minutes long. Discuss the timeline for the implementation and the training.

The data needed for the meeting will include the population of students with disabilities for the program, the special education teachers who will work with the students in developing the transition plans, the training for CIRCLES, and information on interagency involved. Any student with a disability who experiences a need for involvement from multiple agencies to achieve a successful transition to adult life could be in CIRCLES.

References

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, 20 U.S.C. §1400 et seq.

(2004).

Kauffman, J. M., Hallahan, D. P., Pullen, P. C., & Badar, J. (2018). Special education: What it is

And why we need it. Routledge

Povenmire-Kirka, T., Diegelmanna, K., Crumps, K., Schnorr, C., Testa, D., Flowers, C. and

Aspela, A. (2017). Implementing CIRCLES: A new model for interagency collaboration in

transition planning. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation 42, 51–65

DOI:10.3233/JVR-140723

Talapatra, D., Roach, T., Varjas, K., Houchins, D., and Crimmins, D. (2018). Transition services

For students with intellectual disabilities: School psychologists’perceptions. Psychology in

the Schools, 56, 56-78.

Appendix A

Agenda for the Meeting

· Introduction to the meeting

· Discussing the purpose of the meeting

· Review of transition Planning and IDEA.

· Introduce CIRCLES. Watch an introduction video.

· Discussing the benefits of the program

· Participants of all teams.

· timeline

· Closing the meeting