A Collaborative Followup Study on Transition Service Utilization and Post-school Outcomes

Abstract

This postschool outcome study was conducted in collaboration with transition coordinators at four local education agencies to evaluate the utilization and effectiveness of their school district's secondary education programs and transition services. By means of a phone and record review survey, adapted from one developed by the Ohio systems change project for transition, data were collected on 140 randomly selected special education graduates who were one and three years post graduation. A logistic regression analysis showed that vocational education, work study participation, attending a rural school, and having a learning disability were the best predictors of full-time employment after graduation, whereas participation in regular academics and attending a suburban school setting were the best predictors of postsecondary education. The transition coordinators recorded the amount of time it took to complete the surveys for their graduates and participated in the evaluation of their data. It took longer for urban students and students who were further from graduation to complete the followup surveys.