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Transcript of NTA Conference Call Presentation held on 12/18/96 Proactive Approaches to Addressing the Rights and Needs of Youth with Disabilities in School-to-Work SystemsPresented by Kathy Boundy, Co-Director |
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Mary Mack (NTN/NTA): Welcome to the audio teleconference call for December with the Center for Law and Education. The topic for today is Proactive Approaches to Addressing the Rights and Needs of Youths with Disabilities in School-to-Work Systems. As with other teleconference calls, the presenters will start off with some prepared remarks followed by questions and answers by those of you from various states on line, and hopefully this teleconference call will give us a good opportunity for a rich discussion. So with that, I am going to turn the call over to Kathy Boundy who is the co-director of the Center for Law and Education and Kathy will introduce herself and the others from the Center that will be leading the conversation today. Thank you very much.
Kathy Boundy (Center for Law and Education): Thank you Mary. I'm going to be doing a presentation with Lauren Jacobs, one of the staff attorneys. The Center for Law and Education is a national nonprofit organization; it works to advance the rights of all students and, in particular, low income students, to high quality education. We use a range of strategies, including federal and state administrative and legislative advocacy, litigation and community legal education. The Center has a Title I School Reform Project and also a Vocational Opportunity for Community and Educational Development Project. Through these projects the Center actively works with schools and community-based sites to implement systemic educational reform. Also, the Center has been for twenty five years, I think, pretty actively involved in the representation of students with disabilities.
Today, in view of the scope of the topic and given a limited time, we're not going to attempt to cover the gamut of rights of students with disabilities, but to focus specifically on how the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, the Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) assure full participation of students with disabilities in a school-to-work system. In this vein, we are going to focus on three basic principles. First, there must be "equity in program development;" states and school systems must design programs from the outset to address the needs of students with disabilities so as to ensure that they can fully participate in the program. Second, states and schools are responsible for ensuring that admission criteria for both school-based and work-based components of school-to-work programs do not discriminate against the students with disabilities. And lastly, and most briefly, the Perkins Act, School-to-Work Act, Section 504, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act give students with disabilities full participation rights, which are independent of the rights of students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The latter is most relevant in providing "tools" - through the evaluation and development of students' Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) - for meeting the full participation requirements established by these other laws.
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): The first point we'll address is the need for states and school systems to plan their vocational education and school-to-work programs, from the outset, to address the needs of students with disabilities. Students with disabilities must be seen and treated as part of the core constituency of the programs that are designed for all students. I'm going to review the Perkins Act and School-to-Work Act provisions related to that, and then Kathy is going to address the 504, IDEA and ADA. The Perkins Act, for those of you who haven't worked with it, is the federal law governing vocational education. Almost every school district (as well as many community colleges) receives Perkins funds, and thus is bound by its requirements. At the heart of the Perkins Act are overall program requirements that marry quality and equity. Districts receiving Perkins funds must provide special population students (including students with disabilities) with equitable participation in quality programs. Districts cannot make some programs equitable and others high quality and rigorous - they all must be both high quality and equitable, which demands that access and support services be built in.
So, in order to determine whether a district is meeting Perkins requirements, you not only have to look at whether students with disabilities have access and needed services; to participate in vocational programs, you have to look at whether those programs are high quality. Perkins has two key criteria for quality: (1) programs must integrate both vocational and academic learning, meaning that the vocational setting must be utilized to teach not only vocational content, but also basic and advanced academic content; and (2) programs must provide students with strong experience in and understanding of all aspects of the industry which they are preparing to enter - programs have to include and go beyond the traditional technical skills to incorporate planning, management, finance, principles of technology, labor issues, community issues, environmental issues, and health and safety. These, then - basic and advanced academic skills and experience and understanding of all aspects of the industry - are the expected outcomes for students in vocational programs - including for students with disabilities in vocational programs.
This dual mandate (for quality and equity) runs throughout the law. For instance, districts must assess the special needs of students with disabilities so that they can succeed in vocational education the most integrated setting possible. Local applications for Perkins funds must describe the following:
These planning requirements are meant to ensure that programs are designed and staffed to meet the needs of students with disabilities. So, for instance, a student with a learning disability cannot be turned away from a vocational program because that program doesn't have the appropriate staff to help the student understand the material. That's not a valid excuse, and the planning process is meant to avoid that type of problem by ensuring that appropriate staff can be available.
Equity is infused in state planning under the Perkins Act, as well. As part of its state assessment, each state must assess the ability of districts to meet the needs of special populations (including students with disabilities) with respect to vocational education. The state plan is then to be built around meeting those and other identified needs. The state plan is also to describe how the state will comply with criteria for serving special populations, and how it will jointly plan and coordinate programs under Perkins with those conducted under IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act. Vocational education planning for students with disabilities is to be coordinated between appropriate representatives of vocational education, special education, and rehabilitation agencies.
The School-to-Work Act is a newer law, passed in 1994, with major grants going to 37 states, as well as other localities. The School-to-Work Act funds states and localities to build systems that integrate three components: 1) school-based learning, 2) work-based learning (at off-site workplaces or in school-based businesses), and 3) connecting activities that bridge those two settings. The largest, most important grants under the School-to-Work Act are state implementation grants, awarded on a competitive basis. Thirty seven states now have implementation grants, and the bulk of those funds are required to flow through to local partnerships in the states. In addition, local partnerships can apply directly to the federal School-to-Work Office for local grants. School-to-Work funds don't go directly to school districts, but instead go to local partnerships, consisting of school districts, postsecondary institutions, labor organizations, employers, community organizations - a whole range of entities.
The entire School-to-Work Act is written in terms of serving ALL students, and ALL students is defined to include students with disabilities among others. So all of the planning requirements at state and local levels are for serving ALL students, making clear that students with disabilities are part of the core constituency that states and localities must design systems to serve. The School-to-Work Act, similarly to the Perkins Act, marries quality and equity - programs must simultaneously serve ALL students and meet quality criteria. And the quality criteria is largely the same as in Perkins - vocational academic integration, and teaching all aspects of the industry. The main difference is that learning must take place not only in the school but also in work-based learning. In addition, the School-to-Work Act is more specific in terms of outcome standards - that the outcomes expected of all of the students, including students with disabilities, in school-to-work programs must be the same academic standards set by the state for ALL students, whether that's under Goals 2000 or under another process. And part of it must also be preparing ALL students for postsecondary education, as well as careers, so that students can choose which routes they want to go. So once again the big question isn't just whether students with disabilities are being served, but whether they're being served in high quality programs. And to meet that, planning has to be done at the outset. The School-to-Work Act has a number of specific requirements for coordination of vocational education, school-to-work, IDEA and the Rehabilitation Act. These are meant to bring about change at the systemic level, because a lot of the coordination and effective serving of students with disabilities has to take place at that level. I won't go into the specific requirements because we're running out of time on this issue. Kathy do you want to address 504 and the ADA?
Kathy Boundy (CLE): Before we discuss the program requirements under the civil rights statues protecting students with disabilities, let's clarify who's covered. A qualified individual, for purposes of section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, is...
...anyone of an age which nondisabled individuals are provided the education services in question; an age during which state law requires services to be provided to disabled students, or a student with a disability who is entitled to free appropriate public education under IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
And for purposes of the Americans with Disabilities Act, such a person is...
...anyone who with or without reasonable modifications to rules, policies, practices, the removal of architectural barriers or the provision of auxiliary aids and services, meets the essential eligibility requirements of the program or activity.
This means that any student with a disability who could participate with or without specialized instruction, related services, other instructional supports and reasonable accommodations is otherwise qualified under the law. Consequently, we're talking about provisions for delivering specialized instruction, related services, other instructional supports and reasonable accommodations must necessarily be built into the vocational education school-to-work program design.
In examining the legal requirements for ensuring equity and program development, it is a prohibited discriminatory practice under both the 504 and the ADA to (a) deny a qualified individual with a disability the opportunity to participate in any benefit of service, or (b) afford an opportunity to participate that is not equal to that afforded others. It is also prohibited to utilize criteria or methods of administration that have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program regarding individual disabilities or otherwise have the effect of discriminating on the base of the disability.
By way of illustration, let's assume we have a school system that operates a limited number of school-to-work programs based in different high schools, and that eighth grade students submit a single application and they indicate their top three preferences for high school placement. They do this in February; they're not notified of their placement until June. Now in the school system, as is often the case, the Individual Education Plans (IEPs) for the following school year are developed under IDEA earlier in the year, April and May, prior to their choices coming down. So as a result, the IEPs for these eighth graders with disabilities do not reflect the student's choice for a particular program, do not include the goals, specialized instruction, related and supplementary services needed, any accommodations the child may need to succeed in a particular program. And since IEP teams frequently do not meet during the summer, many students will end up entering the school-to-work program in September without educational supports that may be needed to learn effectively. And as is too often the case, it is often months into the school year before IEP teams can convene to address the student's needs.
So therefore, since we would have here students starting school without their IEPs reflecting what they need in school-to-work programs - their IEP teams lacking the information about curriculum of programming services particular to the child's educational needs unique to their disability, and no opportunity to develop the appropriate support - there is no way that these students could be afforded an equal opportunity to obtain the same results, to gain the same benefit, or reach the same level of achievement, as that provided to others. And this is obviously a violation of 504 and the IDEA. Furthermore, the policy of practice of not reviewing and modifying the student's IEPs after selection of their school-to-work program - to ensure that those appropriate supports and reasonable accommodations are implemented - would constitute what we've referred to as a method of administration. That, in this case, it would have the effect of substantially impairing the objective of the program and the student's ability to attain equal benefits provided students without disabilities.
Other program requirements prohibit denying students with disabilities access to vocational programs or courses because of architectural or equipment barriers, or the student's need for related aids and services. If necessary, recipients must modify instructional equipment, modify or adapt the manner in which courses are offered, house the program in accessible facilities and provide related aids or services that assure the child receives an appropriate education.
Recipients may not use a formula or other method of allocating funds that has the effect of discriminating on the base of disability. This should mean that funds must be distributed in a way that allows sufficient money to provide students with disabilities effective specialized instruction, related services and other supports and accommodations that would be necessary for them to have equal access and comparable benefits.
It is also a prohibited discriminatory practice to provide different or separate aids/benefits of services to individuals with disabilities or to any class of individuals with disabilities that are provided to others unless this is necessary to provide qualified individuals with disabilities, the aids/benefits of service that are as effective as those provided to others. Rather, the ADA, 504, and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) state that school districts must provide services, programs and activities in a most integrated setting appropriate to meet the needs of the students with disabilities.
Another prohibited discriminatory practice is for the state or school system to provide an aid/benefit of service to a student with a disability that is not as effective in affording equal opportunity to obtain the same result, to gain the same benefit or reach the same level of achievement as it provided to others.
Again, by illustration. Assume we have a school-to-work program that does not have special educators or related service personnel as part of its instructional personnel; it relies upon separate special education department, and special education department lacks any staff who are knowledgeable about the content areas taught in the school-to-work program. So there's no one on the staff with sufficient understanding of computer programming to develop strategies for teaching the subject to students with specific learning disabilities in the communications technology program. Let's assume that the school has a teacher qualified in communications technology, but without an individual who is knowledgeable and trained at teaching students with learning disabilities, who knows the content area, the students with learning disabilities will receive an education that is not as effective and one which denies them the equal opportunity to obtain the same result as their nondisabled peers.
Let me just finish with this section by referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires each public agency to provide special education or specialized instructions to meet the needs of a child with disability through a continuum of alternatives. That continuum explicitly includes general education, vocational education and a school-to-work program with appropriate supports.
I'm going to move on to the second principle, in terms of the entrance admission criteria. The point we want to stress here is that states and school systems must carefully scrutinize entrance criteria for both school-based and work-based components to ensure that they are truly essential to the participation in that particular program, and that they do not have the effect of discriminating against students with disabilities. Entrance criteria may have to be modified for individual students based on their needs, abilities and the nature of the particular program. States and school districts must also ensure that employers or other outside entities providing work-based learning do not discriminate against students with disabilities.
In looking first at school-based learning, let's assume that we're dealing with a school district that operates two food service programs. One, the Food Preparation Program teaches students how to cut vegetables, make simple recipes and serve food. Its graduates often work in cafeterias and restaurant type kitchens. The other program, Hotel and Restaurant Academy, teaches and expects students to learn how to manage restaurants and hotels - students learn to keep accounts, order supplies, schedule work, cater events with sophisticated menus, etc. The Academy selects students based on a reading level - it measures by a standardized test. This year a number of students with disabilities applied to the Academy. Included are students with a learning disability, a student who is deaf (primary language American Sign Language) and a student who has been labeled as having mild mental retardation. None of the students had the requisite reading test score, so all were rejected from the Academy on the bases. Instead, it was suggested that they enroll in the Food Preparation Program. We have to ask ourselves, "Do we have a problem here?"
In this example, the test score requirement, as applied generally, clearly tends to screen out large classes of students with disabilities. Therefore, the test acts as a criteria that has the effect of barring their access. Under the ADA, a public entity may not impose or apply eligibility criteria that screen out or tend to screen out individuals with disabilities or any class of individuals with disabilities from fully and equally enjoying any service, program or activity unless such criteria can be shown to be necessary for the provision of the service, program or activity. Use of such eligibility criteria is illegal under the ADA unless necessary for participation in the program. The use of the test score prerequisite is illegal under 504 also, unless it has been validated as essential to participation in the program, and alternate equally valid criteria that do not have such a disproportionate adverse effect are unavailable. It's highly unlikely that the reading score requirement from our example meets these standards, and this would be a problem in light of the requirements under 504, IDEA, and Perkins requiring provision of special education supports, related services and supplementary services. Examples of admissions criteria that must be demonstrated to meet the test are past academic performance, the record of disciplinary infraction's, a counselor's approval, teacher's recommendations, interest inventories, high school diplomas and standardized tests. Even when the recipient can demonstrate academic requirements are essential to the program of the instruction, which will in that instance not be regarded as discriminatory, a recipient must, if possible, adjust those requirements to the needs of an individual student. In our hypothetical, for example, even if use of the reading cut off score as a general admission criteria were permissible, Section 504 would require the program to modify it to individual students, and to at least consider whether the requirement makes sense and/or whether it discriminates as to the particular student, but also whether specialized instructions, related aids, services, accommodations, modification of the method of instruction could address any genuine issues posed by the student's measured reading level.
Finally, the IEPs required by the IDEA, which must be based on individual multidisciplinary nondiscriminatory evaluations and that have been validated for the purpose for which they're being used, can be useful in ensuring full participation under the Perkins, School-to-Work, Section 504 and the ADA in order to ensure that all kids with disabilities attain the same educational outcomes expected of all other students. The IDEA evaluation and individualized planning requirement can be used to determine what specialized instruction, related services, and supports a student will need in order to succeed in a high quality vocational education, school-to-work program. Individual Education Plans including goals as well as particular services should be designed to enable the student to achieve in the vocational education, school-to-work program that he/she wishes to attend. Evaluation data, individualized planning, and the expertise of the IEP team can all be used to determine what, if any, modifications, entrance criteria, academic requirements, course delivery or other policies and practice are necessary.
Another significant point with respect to our hypothetical, and then we're going to move on, is that the Food Preparation Program obviously is not an adequate alternative to the Hotel and Restaurant Academy given the obvious difference in program quality, skills taught and future career employment options. It is therefore not equally effective; it does not afford equal opportunity for the child to obtain the same results, to gain the same benefit, or to reach the same level of achievement as that provided to others.
With respect to the work-based learning, again it's easier to examine the requirements by considering a hypothetical case. Let's assume that in an effort to encourage employer participation and to make work-based learning experiences "real world" as possible, the school-to-work program lets employers select high school students who will intern with them. The students present resumes and they interview with the employers. Now we look at the data from the last two years and its clear that employers are not selecting students with disabilities. So the district then sets up a separate program specifically for students with disabilities to intern with a local university or public agency. Do we have problems or concerns here? Well, first, under the nondiscriminatory protections of Section 504 and the ADA:
A recipient may not directly or through contractual or other arrangements, utilize criteria or other methods of administration that have the effect of subjecting qualified students with disabilities to discrimination, or that have the purpose or effect of defeating or substantially impairing the objectives of the recipient programs with respect to that person. A recipient must ensure that it does not discriminate against the students on the basis of handicap, and in making available opportunities in cooperative education, work study and job placement programs and that the students are not discriminated against by employers or prospective employers on the basis of disability in recruitment, hiring, placement, assignments to work tasks, hours of employment, levels of responsibility and in pay.
And so in our hypothetical, to the extent that employers are discriminating against students with disabilities, the school system is, "through contractual or other arrangements, utilizing criteria or methods of administration that have the effect of subjecting qualified handicapped individuals to discrimination, or having the purpose or effect of defeating or substantially impairing the objectives of the recipient program." The district solution, setting up a separate internship program, is not a legal solution. First, students with disabilities are stilled barred from the employment opportunities and the private sector employment opportunities that are afforded to other students, and they're obviously going to have a narrower range of career and work settings with which to experiment and with which to learn. So therefore, they are not offered comparable aids and benefits of services. Second, forcing students with disabilities into separate different programs which are not required to provide them with the benefits of services that are as effective as the alternative ones, constitutes illegal discrimination. And third, even assuming separate program were a permissible placement for some students with disabilities, students would still have the right to participate in the original program, which they appear to be discriminatorily barred from.
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): A lot of the results that you get applying the legal requirements of the laws that Kathy just described can also come out to be the same when you apply the Perkins Act and the School-to-Work Act requirements. It's just a different route to the same result that the students have a right to participate in the full range of programs. I'm going to first just note a couple of Perkins specific requirements. The Perkins Act, I should note, has pages of specific requirements relating to the rights of special populations, including youth with disabilities, to participate, to have services, to have coordination, and monitoring. I'm only mentioning a few of them here.
First, districts must provide equal access, not just to some vocational programs, as I mentioned, but to the full range of vocational programs offered. So looking back to the hypothetical that Kathy mentioned, students have a right to participate in the Hotel and Restaurant Academy, the more rigorous program. If there are internships available to other students, students with disabilities have a right to access to those. Students with disabilities also have a right to equal access to recruitment, to enrollment, and to placement activities. This is probably the biggest violation that we see as we go to schools and look at where the students with disabilities are. They're tracked into certain programs and they don't realize that they have the right to participate in these other programs - in part because they haven't received information about them or about the services that they could receive. The Perkins Act addresses that as well; it requires affirmative outreach and recruitment efforts for students with disabilities, including provision to those students and their parents of specific program information in a language and form that the students and their parents can understand. This has to include information on not only the programs offered, but also the special services that are available.
Another Perkins requirement is that the program may not discriminate on the basis of disability, in enrollment or in program activities. So again, that takes you back to a really rigorous examination of entrance criteria and whether in fact the criteria that are being used are tied to disability status, in which case it goes through the reasoning that Kathy outlined. And the criteria would often have to go. Access doesn't just stop at the open door, but under the Perkins Act, programs must provide the extra services that students need to succeed in the program and that has its base on the assessment of their individual needs. So the timing then would be that first the students have a right to be accepted into the program on the same basis as other students in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Then there needs to be an individual assessment of their needs and a plan to meet those needs. The supplementary services that must be provided (where needed) include curriculum, equipment and classroom modifications; supportive personnel; and instructional aids and devices. Those are up front requirements, and then as I mentioned, there's the Perkins Act requirement that localities conduct an annual evaluation of how these plans are working, whether the requirements are really being implemented. That evaluation has to look at each of the projects or courses of studies that are offered. They should look at the Hotel and Restaurant Academy separately from the Food Preparation Program. Often this requirement is violated. We see evaluations that group programs together, in which case it's impossible to tell whether students with disabilities are really being tracked into lower quality programs, as opposed to having the access and services to participate in the full range of the programs. If there are internship opportunities, the evaluations should be disaggregating the data on those as well, to see where students with disabilities are. Then where the participation and success of the students with disabilities is disproportionately low, the district would need to take action to identify and then overcome any barriers to access and success.
The School-to-Work Act has a similar equal access requirement. Programs must provide students with equal access to the full range of program components and related activities. I want to stress that this includes work-based learning, as well as school-based learning and connecting activities. Just because some of the learning is taking place outside of the school building, possibly in a place of private employment or in a community organization, that does not negate the responsibility of the partnership to provide equal access to students with disabilities, and to ensure that access is built in from the beginning.
I want to make one final note on this issue since the equal access provisions in the Perkins Act and School-to-Work Act are really core. Supreme Court rulings have made it clear that "access" is not just an open door or permission to be in a program. When the Perkins Act and the School-to-Work Act require that students have access to programs, that has to be meaningful access, including the services and the assistance that students need to fully participate and succeed in the program. When applied to work-based learning, we see that if a student needs an aid in a workplace in order to learn in that setting, in order to meaningfully participate, then the partnership must provide that aid, and the Perkins Act would lead to the same conclusion as well - that that assistance is required.
I know we're a little over time, and I think we're going to cut short the discussion on the third point that we wanted to get to. I'm just going to briefly state it. We've gone really quickly through five different laws. Each of them creates separate and independent rights. For instance, apart from any rights that students with disabilities have under IDEA, they have rights directly under the Perkins Act, the School-to-Work Act, Section 504, and ADA to enroll in vocational education and school-to-work programs. And apart from Perkins and School-to-Work, students with disabilities have a right under IDEA to transition services, including employment-related education. The laws complement each other, though. The programs and processes under each law, even though they're independent rights, can be used, if coordinated, to meet the requirements of the other laws. So for instance, IDEA processes, such as the Individualized Education Plan (IEP), can be used as a tool to implement students' rights, under Perkins, School-to-Work, 504 and ADA, to participation in vocational education and school-to-work programs, by ensuring that the students have all the support services that they need to learn and to achieve the same high outcomes. The vocational education and school-to-work programs can be used to fulfill, in part, IDEA transition requirements. Following through on that, there are numerous provisions in Perkins and School-to-Work that refer specifically to these other laws - IDEA and 504 most commonly. The only way to implement those requirements is really for the system to be coordinated. This is a case where a lot of the devil is in the details (or the devil is in the methods of administration), because you get issues of timing and of staff working together. If those aren't working out, for instance if the IEP process takes place before the student even knows that they're interested in the Restaurant and Hotel Academy, then it can't possibly be fulfilling the need and the requirement to ensure that the right services are in place to help the student in that academy. Kathy do you want to add anything on that last point?
Kathy Boundy (CLE): No, I think that's a good place to wrap it up, and I think we should open up for questions.
Debby Mark (Pennsylvania): As we were listening to all the information that you were sharing, we noted that you mentioned employers are not selecting students with disabilities. And mainly we were wondering if this could be in part due to liability concerns on the part of the employers. And we were wondering, what types of liability concerns should an employer have with regard to school-to-work programs and student placements, as well as those with school employees?
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): The liability issue is with regard to every student population when students are going out to work-based learning. I haven't looked at it specifically in relationship to students with disabilities, but I assume that it would be the exact same issue. Every district and state addresses this differently. In some places the work-based learning is treated as a field trip, and so the school's liability coverage extends to the workplace, and it would extend to all of the students in the workplace. In other cases, students at work-based learning are considered employees and workmen's compensation covers them. So, I think it would really be the same issue that arises more generally in school-to-work.
Debby Mark (Pennsylvania): To follow up, we understand that the employer may have some responsibilities for that person in the workplace, but we're also thinking of the experiences that lead into employment whether it is exploration, job shadowing, non-paid vocational training, or onsite experiences, where they're not necessarily obligated to cover them. And also the concerns we might have with staff who are also out there outside of the class environment, we're still struggling with what we can do and set it up here with regard to all employees.
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): If you want, I can try to track down some of publications I've seen on handling liability and get it to Mary (see letter addressed to Mary Mack from the Ctr for Law & Education attached). There isn't a lot written on it, because it's state specific; each state has different laws regarding worker's compensation and insurance in school districts and so on. I'll see if I can find something general and I'll send that along.
Amy Bennett (Nat'l School-to-Work Office): I just want to agree with Lauren that in the states that we're hearing from, students with disabilities involved in work-based learning opportunities are being treated in the same way as any other student. And as she said, some states are dealing with it by treating certain activities as field trips and so they're covered by the school's insurance, and in other cases it's being covered by the employers. Having said that, there are a number of states that are currently struggling with the liability issue. Vermont, for example, is proposing some interesting ways, as is New Hampshire. One of the things you might want to do in addition to the information that Lauren has agreed to provide is to contact the School-to-Work Information and Learning Center (Office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Call 1-800-251-7236, or write to: The National School-to-Work Learning & Information Center, 400 Virginia Avenue, SW, Room 210, Washington, DC 20024. E-mail: stw-lc@ed.gov WWW: http://www.stw.ed.gov) and they will give you information. One will be a handbook on the Fair Labor Standards Act and how it applies to students under the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. And a second thing might be just to put a question up on the web site and ask for information about liability issues.
Mary Mack (NTN/NTA): Other questions?
Judy Sockalow (Texas): We were wondering if our students' IEP or ITP has a noncompetitive work goal, like a sheltered workshop for example, would that not come in conflict with the argument that the student needs to be afforded equal access to employment opportunities? And are you aware of any law suits where this to come up?
Kathy Boundy (CLE): Conceivably, it could conflict, and this is again an individualized determination, conceivably it could be a problem where in fact the goal is an accurate one and the objective is fair, given the student's particular disability and the severity of the child's disability. On the other hand, I think what we're seeing more and more is that as the states are adopting standards and creating standards for ALL students, the definition of an appropriate education under the IDEA is consistent with the state education agency standards. And most students with disabilities can attain, if given the opportunity and the supports, the same standards as are expected of other students. And this is the whole point of using the IEP process in terms of planning, the individualized determination, the evaluation and the objective and goals of the IEP's being consistent with the benchmarks, if you will, for attaining the standards expected for ALL students. So, I think what we're starting to see is the pressure coming from that direction, and to utilizing 504 and ADA as the Civil Rights Statutes that they are to ensure equal outcomes and access to services.
Larry Glance (Maine): We have been having sort of a long running disagreement with one of the major contractors in the State School-to-Work Implementation Project. Most of the money that comes into our School-to-Work Project goes to existing service providers and there's a lot of co-mingling of funds, and sometimes it is hard to track these things. The organization, Jobs for Maine Graduates, is adopted after Jobs for American Graduates Programs, which I think are in place nationwide. And one of their criteria for entry is that the individual not have other recognizable means of support - they really want to deal with individuals who are at risk of being long term on public assistance. And almost by definition, every time we've asked about individuals with disabilities who are plugged into special education programs and have an individual student plan, they say that these individuals do have physical means of support and therefore they're not eligible. This seems to us, on it's face, as exclusion along the lines of what you were describing earlier. I just wonder if you'd comment on that.
Kathy Boundy (CLE): Without knowing more about it, I would agree. It would certainly raise my suspicion in terms of a method or criteria of administration.
Larry Glance (Maine): Would you have any advice? This is basically the level to which we've examined it. Do you just try to get a formal statement of that kind of policy? I'm not even sure they exist. Or how do you collect information? We've not pursued this at all.
Kathy Boundy (CLE): I would basically want to look at some of the letters of finding and policy letters issued by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights. I would suspect that there's precedent in this area where similar criteria have been used and challenged (under Section 504, ADA). I don't know offhand, but I would suspect so.
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): I think it's also real clear under the School-to-Work Act that that's not equal access. In particular, if the means of support is federal government given to those individuals because they have disabilities, then it's clearly just exclusion on that basis.
Larry Glance (Maine): Thanks.
Judy Dickson (Vermont): You were talking about this annual evaluation, is this like a self-assessment?
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): The one under the Perkins Act - the annual program evaluation - is done by the school districts or postsecondary institutions themselves.
Judy Dickson (Vermont): And how effective has that been?
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): Not very, for a couple of reasons. First off, it's not drafted incredibly well in the law, so there are two different provisions and people often ignore one of them. The evaluation is supposed to be done on two different bases. First, it's supposed to use any state system of standards and measures for vocational education, and most of the states' systems of standards and measures are not very demanding, to put it nicely: really low academic expectations, very fuzzy on access rates and on what kind of improvement is necessary if a locality isn't meeting the standards. The other part of the program evaluation is that regardless of what the state standards are, the district has an obligation to review the program and look at access as I described. That's not being done in most places.
Judy Dickson (Vermont): That's my experience here, they're the ones discriminating. I can't imagine that it would be effective.
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): The state should be monitoring that and overseeing the process, and most states aren't doing that either. It's a clear legal violation.
Mary Mack (NTN/NTA): I think we've run out of time, maybe let's take one more question and then I'll wrap it up.
Margaret Clark (California): This is Margaret Clark at the California Department of Education JTPA Program. And I was hoping you could further elaborate on the connections that JTPA Programs should be making or could do to ensure school-to-work equity and access?
Lauren Jacobs (CLE): That's a really good question, that I'd need to do more work on to give you a decent answer. I heard Amy Bennett was on the line and Amy, you might have a better answer. There are specific provisions about coordination, but particularly with the de-funding and the problems recently existing in JTPA, they're really complicated questions.
Amy Bennett (Nat'l School-to-Work Office): If you would like to give me a call after the conference call, I'd be happy to talk with you about it. It's (202) 401-6222.
Mary Mack (NTN/NTA): I want to thank the Center for Law and Education and Kathy Boundy and Lauren Jacobs for being with us today. And thank everybody that's on the phone. Also I want to inform those of you that are the line that David Johnson and I will be in conversation with Kathy Boundy and Paul Weckstein from the Center on Friday to talk about where NTA and the Center might go from here. So, I would like some input on some products and what kind of information might be helpful to you. So, if you want to give me a call at (612) 624-7579, that would be great. Thank you very much.
National Transition Alliance for Youth with Disabilities (NTA) conference call presentations are sponsored by the NTA and coordinated by the National Transition Network. For a copy of this or other transcripts, contact us at:
URL: http://ici1.umn.edu/ntn/audio/1996/dec.html
Posted February 27, 1997
ncset@umn.edu
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