| Megan
Dushin (NTA): Welcome to the National Transition
Alliance monthly teleconference series. The topic of this
call is School-to-Work Evaluation Systems Outcomes that
Include Outcome Measures for Youth with Disabilities. Our presenters today are Tom Grayson, the
Director of the National Transition Alliance at the
Transition Research Institute at Illinois (TRI), John
Johnson, Evaluation Specialist and Technical Assistance
Coordinator for the NTA, also at TRI, and Sharon Belli,
Evaluation Specialist at the National School-to-Work
Office in Washington, DC. I'd like to welcome the
presenters and thank you very much for offering to hold
this conference on evaluation.
First John Johnson will present
the specific goals we have for this call, then each of
the panelists will provide their perspective on
evaluation systems.
John Johnson
(NTA): Thank you, Megan. Clearly, we can't do a workshop
or even remotely approach a presentation on evaluation on
the phone, but I think what we can do is identify
critical issues that are going on across the country, as
well as provide information on available resources.
The primary goal of this call is
to identify some challenges that are faced by folks who
are engaging in evaluation of school-to-work initiatives,
with the intent of suggesting that those challenges are
significant but not necessarily insurmountable.
The second goal we have for this
call is to share resources for implementing evaluation
systems and understanding large scale evaluation systems.
Briefly, there are technical assistance materials from
the National School-to-Work Web Site at http://www.stw.ed.gov and the Transition Research Institute at
Illinois (217-333-2325). Additionally, the National
Transition Alliance is a technical assistance resource
for states.
The third goal we have is to
share problems we have run into as we have approached
evaluation of school-to-work systems from the perspective
of the folks out there in the field and some of the
issues that we have encountered, as for example in the
school-to-work round table conferences.
Starting off, I'd like to turn
it over to Sharon Belli.
Sharon Belli
(NSTWO): I wanted to very briefly provide some overview
comments about the National School-to-Work Office's
research and evaluation agenda to give us a frame for
this discussion. I also want to talk about some of the
data elements and findings related to school-to-work and
all students, and specifically students with
disabilities. After that, I just want to talk a little
bit about what we know about data collection –
what's working and what's not working. And then some of
the strategies that we're using at the National
School-to-Work Office to work with the National
Transition Alliance to improve data collection on all
students, including students with disabilities.
So, I'm going to start by
referencing Section 402 of School-to-Work Opportunities
Act. That's the mandate that's in the law to collect data
on all students. It's what Congress wants us to find out
about the participation of all students and the outcomes
for all students. They break down students by gender,
race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, academically
talented students, and students with disabilities. The
National School-to-Work Office has developed a number of
strategies to collect this information and provide it to
Congress and also back to states and local partnerships.
The first is the national
school-to-work evaluation. Under this evaluation, one of
the surveys that goes out is called the local partnership
survey. As part of the local partnership survey we ask
for information on who's participating on government
structures. And, specifically, we want to know about
advocacy groups, folks that are working with students
with disabilities and seeing whether or not they are
participating on those government structures. We are
trying to find out the local partnership strategies for
promoting access for all students and providing them with
school-to-work initiatives. We ask about the
participation of students with disabilities in
school-based enterprises. And we ask about the percentage
of individuals with disabilities that are completing
school-to-work intensive activities. That's on the local
partnership survey side of it.
We also ask local partnerships
for progress measures. We ask for demographic information
for students that are participating in school-based
learning and work-based learning.
We also, at the National Office,
are trying to promote state and local level evaluations.
And you heard John talk a little bit about data
conferences that we're having. Through the conferences,
we work with states and assist them to look at their
systems and the extent to which they are serving all
students and providing school-to-work opportunities for
everyone.
I also want to provide a few
little snapshots of what we're finding through our
evaluation activities. This is information from the 1996
survey. The 1997 survey was completed and information is
coming out shortly. There is going to be a report to
Congress shortly that is going to provide updates on
these findings. In general, what we're finding with the
local partnership survey is that we're getting very
limited data about advocacy groups being involved on the
governance structures of partnerships. We're finding out
that many local partnerships have a number of strategies
for promoting access to school-to-work. For example,
interpreters are being made available, and that materials
are being developed, customized, and targeted to assist
individuals with disabilities know about school-to-work
activities and become involved in school-to-work
activities.
As far as participation in
school-based enterprises, we are finding that 24.2% of
all local partnerships – and there were 828 that
provided responses – indicated that they were doing
something about getting students with disabilities
involved in school-based enterprises. And in terms of the
seniors completing intensive school-to-work
activities–meaning that a student is involved in a
work-based learning experience that is connected back
into their career major – we're finding that
nationwide it's a very low percentage of seniors that
actually receive such an experience. We're trying to
increase that. But we did find out, however, that 9.5% of
students with disabilities were able to be involved in
those school-to-work intensive activities.
On the progress measures survey,
I had indicated that we were looking for demographics on
school-based learning and work-based learning.
Unfortunately, we found that most partnerships were not
able to provide information on all students in general.
They weren't able to provide information on their gender,
their race, their ethnicity, whether they were
academically talented or eligible to free and reduced
lunch. So, it wasn't just that they couldn't identify
whether students were individuals with disabilities, it
was across all student groups that they were not able to
provide that information.
This leads into the next point
that I wanted to make about barriers to collecting data.
We are finding that many local partnerships do not have
the capacity to collect this data on all students.
Therefore, it's very hard when we go out and we are
trying to measure the scale and scope of our activities
to find out whether in fact we are serving all students.
Hence the national school-to-work office wanted to
develop a strategy to really improve data collection and
capacity. And there's a number of things that we've done.
This winter we had Data
Institutes. John and Tom were able to be at those
institutes and help local partnerships to address issues
around collecting data on all students. The National
Transition Alliance had a forum, and as a part of that,
local partnerships were able to work on their evaluation
strategies and develop action plans. On the
School-to-Work Web Site, we're hoping to be able to share
information on effective strategies for capturing data on
all students. We also have on the Web a list of
providers, some that have a lot of experience with
collecting data.
And, finally, the National
Transition Alliance has formed a partnership with our
office to help local partnerships during the data
collection phase of the local partnership and progress
measures surveys. I think that there is a basic
under-reporting that's going on in terms of collecting
data for all students, not just individuals with
disabilities but for all students. So, we're hoping to be
able to impact that and we're looking forward to our
collaboration with NTA to help us out with that. I'm
going to end my comments there for now. And I think I'm
going to turn it over to Tom. Tom?
Tom Grayson
(NTA): Thank you, Sharon. My comments are going to focus
on the technical assistance that the National Transition
Alliance offers to the states. As with most technical
assistance efforts, we try to make sure that our
assistance is what we call “customer driven.”
That is, whatever states need or want, that's what we try
to provide. We try not to take an advocacy position when
it comes to evaluation technical assistance. We don't try
to tell people what needs to be done or how to do it or
to give directives. Instead, we ask a series of questions
to determine from the states what their needs are and
what they want. All of us in evaluation, and those of us
who are in the business of educational policy realize
that school-to-work is part of educational reform. As
part of any educational reform effort, there is a
requirement for evaluating the results. In the case of
all the students in school-to-work (and that means
including individuals with disabilities), are they
getting jobs? The bottom line is getting a job. That's
what school-to-work is really all about.
As all of us know, measuring the
results of educational reform is not an easy task. Our
task is to answer the questions, “What are students
learning as a result of school-to-work efforts,”
and, “What can students do as a result of
school-to-work efforts?” Our technical assistance is
in terms of helping states to look at how they are
collecting information and reporting information that
answers the questions of what students know and what can
students do.
Here are questions that we ask
states to consider in terms of evaluation systems that
include students with disabilities.
What does including students
with disabilities in accountability or evaluation systems
mean to you in your state, at the local level and at the
state level? This is a very important question to ask up
front because it tells us what the mindset is toward
evaluation. Is the mindset of the state to collect
information after the fact? Are we just going to
implement a school-to-work system and then suddenly think
about, “Oh, we have to report the results.” Or
is the mindset one of, “Gosh, we need to be thinking
about evaluation from the very beginning. We need to put
ourselves in the position where we can make changes in
the way we collect data and report data on an ongoing
basis so that we can improve our efforts.” That
question usually gets the states thinking on the right
track.
Who are the people involved? Who
are the stakeholders that will be making decisions about
the participation of students with disabilities in the
assessment process? Many states have not thought about
who all the players are – the program people, policy
makers, students, parents, people who are involved in the
IEP process where the goals are identified for the
students, and so forth. All these people need to be
brought together to talk about this notion of assessment.
What is the current view of
evaluation among your key, relevant stakeholders? We try
to get at what information is being provided that
decision makers need in order to be accountable for
results. Can cross-system information, as well as
individual information from the programs be produced,
collected? Are all the relevant stakeholders again at the
table?
What capacity exists at the
local and state level for understanding or implementing
and using a school-to-work data collection and reporting
system that includes students with disabilities? It's
very important when you have all the stakeholders
together to discuss what the capacity of the state is. At
the local level and at the state level, who is doing what
and how are people working together?
What needs to be developed that
will help the decision makers translate new information
and requirements into operational or policy or investment
decisions to include students with disabilities in the
school-to-work evaluation system?
Those are the primary questions
that we ask that generate a lot of discussion and
interest and tend to focus individuals when they think
about school-to-work evaluation systems.
We know from our experience that
different states are at different levels of understanding
and implementing school-to-work data collection and
reporting systems, systems that include all students. We
also know that the timing is relatively good right now
because of the new IDEA requirements that are requiring
states to report on all students in terms of their
special education services, needs, transition
requirements, and so forth.
Our goal is to get everybody
working together to figure out what their needs are in
order to put together a good system of data collection
and reporting that reports on all students. We know that
this is very important for students. It's a high stakes
assessment, in a way, because it results in employment.
We feel that if we do not include all students, then
those that we exclude are not going to have the
opportunity for taking advantage of school-to-work
implementation and getting a job. With that, I'm going to
turn it over to John.
John Johnson:
Thanks, Tom. I'm going to start off with a resource that
everybody concerned with evaluation of school-to-work
should be familiar with. This particular resource is an
article which addresses the majority of concerns of the
School-to-Work Office and anybody dealing with any large
scale evaluation system working with kids with
disabilities, and is entitled, Why We Can't Say Much
About Students with Disabilities During Education Reform.
The authors are Vandergood, McGrew, and Ysseldyke and it
was published this year in Exceptional Children, Vol. 64,
No. 3, and the pages are 359 to 370. At the end of this
article, the authors provide eight recommendations for
addressing the development of any large scale evaluation
system. Anyone who is interested in pursuing the
development and/or implementation of an evaluation system
ought to pay close attention to those recommendations.
What I'd like to move into a
little bit is some of the things that we have done
through the National Transition Alliance in the
school-to-work evaluation round tables. I'd like to
address some of the discussions at these round tables and
how they have evolved around kids with disabilities and
their involvement in school-to-work systems.
I'll start with a couple of
things that we have discovered. I want to reinforce
Sharon's concern in finding that local partnerships are
having difficulty collecting, gathering, and acquiring
data. I think this is partly because while local
partnerships are organized to provide services, they
really don't have the capacity and the resources to
engage in large scale evaluation data systems. One of the
approaches that we have taken and tried to focus states
on is the understanding that any evaluation system that
is initiated should be coordinated with existing
information management systems within the state. For
example, in Illinois we had the Illinois Vocational
Education System which has been revised to accommodate
all the specifications with respect to the School-to-Work
Opportunities Act, IDEA, Carl Perkins, and other chief
state and federal legislation. This information
management system is on a database in the Windows
operating system. Now, the thing that is important is
that that's an information management system that's
already operating and has been in place for many years.
It takes into account that any evaluation system has to
be comparable across the board.
Now, let me tell you some of the
problems that we have run into. We have run into a lack
of uniformity among the variables included in data
systems. For example, how do you define a student with a
disability? Do you define the student according to state
legislation? Do you define it according to definition of
a student with a disability out of IDEA? Do you define it
as a person with a disability according to the
definitions in the Americans with Disabilities Act, Carl
Perkins? How do you exactly define a student with a
disability? We are working very closely with the National
School-to-Work Office to suggest that the primary
definition ought to be out of IDEA, because we are
working with a population of youth with disabilities ages
fourteen and over who are in school. That's what our
recommendation is. We are strongly suggesting that folks
stay with that, because then potentially whatever data
you collect can be – we would hope, I am actually
pressing my luck here by saying this but I'll do it
anyway – data that might be somewhat comparable to
information that's reported in the annual report to
Congress through IDEA. Now, that's a big stretch. But the
starting point there is your definition of your subject.
The other thing that we're
running into of course is, as Sharon pointed out, lack of
resources at the local level. That's not a surprising
finding. I believe that evaluation systems need to occur
at a minimum at the regional and state level. And
probably at the state level because most states have an
existing information management system in place. Anything
that you do should be coordinated with whatever
information management systems are in place. There
appears to be across the board a general exclusion of
youth with disabilities from data collection systems, and
this is consistent with the findings by Vandergood in the
article that I talked about. It's also difficult when
there is not a consistent definition of youth. It's also
not surprising when you have that on top of a capacity
issue.
So, all of these issues make it
difficult to gather data and acquire data on subgroups of
populations that might be considered low-incidence
populations. That is, they may represent five and maybe
to a maximum ten percent of the total student population.
In our findings and working in the school-to-work
evaluations, there does appear to be some inexperience
and in some cases a lack of familiarity with evaluation
principles and systems. There appear to be some legal
issues around confidentiality and the use of social
security numbers and student identification information.
And there are a number of other issues, but the ones I've
mentioned are the ones that we have found to be pretty
consistent across the board as we have worked with folks.
I think the best way to learn
about a good evaluation system is to find somebody who is
actually doing it and to cue from that and to talk about
how that system actually got structured from the very
beginning. I think that most of the questions around
collecting school-to-work data aren't really because
people don't want to do it or in many cases don't
necessarily have the capacity. I think the capacity is
there. I think what's happening is that in order to
collect the data, the source of the data needs to be
identified at the state level.
So, when you begin to look at
how data is structured, one of the things that is almost
a caveat in any evaluation system is that you must make
sure you introduce all variables that you want to collect
information on the front end of the design of an
evaluation system. It will take you five to ten years to
get at least those variables included in the evaluation
system if you don't. My point being that if I want to
collect information about kids with disabilities and
we're not collecting that data now, it becomes almost a
political issue to try to restructure the evaluation
system to include those kids in that system. That's real
difficult and that's something that cuts across any
minority constituencies, such as kids with disabilities.
These are issues that cut across all subgroup
populations.
The other thing that I'm finding
interesting as we get into discussions with folks at the
local level is how evaluation questions are framed.
Exactly what information do you want to know? And how do
you focus and frame your evaluation questions so that
your data directly reflect answers to those questions?
And sometimes we tend to collect a lot of data and then
we go back and re-ask the questions. Then we discover to
our surprise the data that we've collected does not
address our questions. I would suggest that before you
think about inducing variables into your evaluation
systems, you need to really think about what is it you
want to know about youth with disabilities or any
subgroup populations.
From that standpoint, let me
give you some suggestions related to that. There are four
caveats.
Identify the general group or
population or subpopulations involved. I am talking about
specifically defining the population. If you can do that
empirically, that would be helpful.
Specify the general types of
actions, services or programs that are involved with what
you're doing. That is, what is this population doing?
What is being delivered? In the old days we called it an
intervention. What's happening? What is it that is
causing change? Is it an educational program? In our
case, it should be school-based, work-based, and
connecting types of activities.
Ask yourself, “What do you
want to occur as an end result?” That's very simple.
In other words, what changes do you want to see happen as
a result of that? I'm oversimplifying this a bit.
Identify the level within the
system that your evaluation questions address. People
don't think about this question and I believe that folks
at the local level take on the burden of responsibility.
Sometimes the questions that you are asking address
student outcome variables. That is, the grades that they
are receiving. Did they get a job? Are they successfully
completing a particular program? But then your questions
may address, “Are there certain services in
place?” That's a very different level than a student
outcome. So, that's at the program level. You may want to
ask a question related to your state policy. Is there a
policy within your state about including kids with
disabilities in school-to-work systems? That's an even
altogether different question at a different level.
So, if you take a systems
approach level and you think that you've got the state
level, maybe a community level, a program level, a school
level, and then a local level, and then a student level,
you're talking about six different levels you could
potentially ask evaluation questions about, some of which
may overlap, but some of which the empirical measures at
those six levels will be very different because they are
very different questions. Also, you have to understand
that your customers at those different levels are very
different. In some cases, your customer may be
school-to-work personnel, depending on the kinds of
questions you're asking. But at another level the
customer is the individual. Some of the questions I've
asked in Vermont, for example, are basic questions around
kids with disabilities. We're looking at things like
market. We ask, “How many kids with disabilities are
there out there in your state that represent the possible
group that could access school-to-work services?” Or
we look at penetration and ask, “What percentages of
those youth are actually accessing and participating in
school-to-work systems?” Then we look at outcomes.
“How many are successfully completing them according
to specific criteria that you might define?”
Those are some of the things
that we deal with in terms of actual content information
that we deliver related to the technical assistance. I'm
going to turn it back over to Megan and maybe we can get
some questions going on here from folks.
Megan Dushin: Thank
you very much, John, Sharon and Tom. Let's open up for
questions to the presenters.
Participant:
This is Virginia Posey (phonetic) from San Diego. You
mentioned the database for the MIS system. Is that
something that we can access, the components of that
model?
Editors Note: As
of September 1, 1998, the Illinois State Board of
Education (ISBE) is discussing the possibility of
creating a demo version of this Management Information
System to share with states. The best way to see if this
demo version is available to states is to visit the ISBE
Web site at http://www.isbe.state.il.us
and go to the link
"Business, Community and Family Partnerships."
The Business, Community and Family Partnerships division
of ISBE indicated that the software, if it is developed,
will be available through the internet.
Tom Grayson:
Another resource is a book called All Kids Count:
Including students with disabilities in statewide
assessment programs, recently published by the Federation
for Children with Special Needs in Boston, Massachusetts.
That document has a profile for all the states and what
they are doing in terms of statewide assessments and
including individuals with disabilities. It's a starting
point. They also address some of the major policy issues
and they give you names and contacts of individuals. It
can be obtained by the Federation for Children with
Special Needs, 95 Berkeley Street Suite 104, Boston,
Massachusetts 02116. The phone number: 617-482-2915. It's
a very good publication and it also lists the types of
accommodations that states are using in the assessment
process. So, I think it would be a useful document for
many of you.
Participant:
This is Kris Schoeller from Minnesota. Have you run
across in your search throughout the states how the
school-to-work and the statewide standards testing may be
conflicting with each other? I'll give an example. If
someone is requiring that all students with disabilities
be included in statewide testing and you have a certain
percentage of them that will never pass the test, but
that are being placed in extended academic classes in
order to pass the test, it's taking away time from being
in a more contextual applied learning community-based
learning program, and keeping them in rigorous academic
classes, which are not necessarily relevant. I'm
wondering if that's going to be problem in states as they
are required to include kids with disabilities in a
statewide standards testing.
John Johnson: There
was a conference that the NTA co-hosted with the National
School-to-Work Office addressing exactly that issue. That
is, how do you deal with statewide standards and
assessment practices and deal with both consistencies and
inconsistencies between expectations for achieving those
standards, performance standards, as well as assessment
practices that are involved in those states. I'm going to
tell you right now, after having that conference, where a
lot of really good solid information was provided, there
is no real clear answer to that. The short answer is yes.
We are running across that very consistently in probably
every state. The long answer is, you are asking me how we
can address that? Quite frankly, I think that's probably
more of a policy and political issue than it is a
standards and assessment issue.
Tom Grayson: I
also feel that we need the courage to use some common
sense. States need to ask the question, “Are there
individuals who are not able to participate in assessment
systems, such as those who are severely cognitively
impaired?” Until we are ready to sit down and ask
that question and answer it with some good old fashioned
common sense, then we are going to just keep ourselves
open to the controversy about this notion about should we
or should we not exclude a particular person from
assessment systems.
Mary Mack
(NTA): The National Center for Educational Outcomes at
the University of Minnesota has developed some extremely
good criteria and a checklist to help states to look at
when a person would not be part of an accountability
system.
Editor's Note:
This document is in a series of reports, and it is the
Synthesis Report 25. The title is Assessment Guidelines
that Maximize the Participation of Students with
Disabilities in Large Scale Assessments: Characteristics
and Considerations. You can order this report through
NCEO by calling (612) 624-8561. They also have an
excellent Web site with online publications and a full
publications list at http://www.education.umn.edu/nceo.
Participant:
This is Kim Wainsayer (phonetic) in Missouri. I have a
question for Sharon. You mentioned a report to Congress
that should be coming out soon. Do you have an estimated
time when that would be available and how someone could
get a copy of that?
Sharon Belli: That
is going to go to Congress in September. I'm not sure
what part of September. I'm hoping on the earlier side,
that might be optimistic. And as soon as it goes to
Congress it will be available on our Web site at http://www.stw.ed.gov. From the main page, go to the
Evaluation link. That is where the reports to Congress
are located.
Participant:
This is Charlotte Goodsen (phonetic) in Missouri. Would
any one of you talk a little bit more about the barrier
of confidentiality as it relates to evaluation? I think
that's probably our biggest barrier down here and I'm not
sure how to address that. Are there specific strategies
that we can deal with that?
John Johnson:
Illinois has dealt with that in kind of an unusual way.
One of the things that happened was there was some
legislation that was passed, but they also looked at the
extent to which certain identifier numbers would be a
violation of an individual's confidentiality. What's
happening is, that information and that data is collected
by the states and it's required to be collected by the
states regardless. When the data is reported, it's always
reported in an aggregate form. Therefore, there is no
possibility of a breach of confidentiality of any
individual student because none of the data is traced to
any single individual. That's one way that that's dealt
with. Some of the practical issues that Illinois dealt
with is they were given a student ID number that was
developed by the state board of education. And they moved
from that ID number to a social security number. Well,
the problem is that you've got a lot of kids who may not
necessarily have a social security number for any number
of reasons. What it's come down to is that states need to
look at what their confidentiality procedures and
policies are, identify the extent to which certain
practices actually breach individual confidentiality, and
if they don't, then it doesn't really become that much of
an issue. At least, that's what we've found in this
state. And that's based on my interaction with folks with
the Illinois State Board of Education. When the question
of confidentiality comes up, it's important to have
critical people at the table to address it. All
researchers or evaluators, people that collect data, are
confronted with that question all the time. It's
important to have your policy folks and your technicians,
your data collectors, people who analyze data together,
as well as with the constituency so there is some kind of
collective understanding and agreement as to how one is
going to proceed, because it varies from one state to
another, depending on different types of legislation
that's in place.
Participant:
This is Carol Ann Breyer in Florida. I just wanted to ask
Sharon if she could comment further on her observation
that there is a limited involvement of advocacy groups in
governance in terms of building partnerships. I'd be
interested in knowing a little bit more about which
advocacy groups and why that might be a reason.
Sharon Belli: The
survey doesn't list “which advocacy groups,”
however the numbers reported are few. In this, not all
local partnerships had representatives of advocacy
groups, in general. Now, it's a matter of states working
with their local partnerships and making sure that they
are included at the local partnership level. As you know,
the specific naming of a transition planning committee or
other advocacy group for individuals with disabilities is
not a requirement in the Act. Just because it's not a
requirement, local partnerships should really expand to
include representatives of all students on their local
partnership. At this point a PR and marketing strategy
for insuring that systems are all inclusive –
John Johnson:
Sharon, you're using the word “advocacy” from
what I'm hearing in a real broad sense, which would
include any organization, such as state agencies, who may
provide employment services specifically to folks with
disabilities. Is that correct?
Sharon Belli:
That would be at the State level. But once the money
rolls down to a regional or local partnership level, it
would be those folks that were involved in any type of
advocacy or transition planning at the local level. I
would hope including special educators or anyone that
would be involved on those local partnerships. So, I
think for the most part that states – John, you can
correct me if I'm wrong – have folks that deal with
that, as well as vocational rehabilitation, et cetera, on
their statewide partnerships. Do you see that at your
Institute, that there were folks there that represented
those constituency groups?
John Johnson: I
think you've clarified some issues. The concern I have is
this, and I just need to raise this to folks so that they
are aware of this. The National Council on Disability is
a very well recognized national advocacy organization
that is involved in dealing with employment issues for a
very long time. Also, the Consortium for Citizens with
Disabilities (CCD) has been involved with that at the
national level. The problem is that when you get down at
the local level, in many cases – and because I'm
directly involved with some determination organizations
and advocacy groups – employment is not necessarily
on the radar screen.
Sharon Belli:
That's right.
John Johnson: And
even when you're talking about local chapters that deal
with folks, for example, in supportive employment, they
deal with a very select group and their advocacy efforts
are limited to almost focusing in on the kinds of
employment services they may receive. So, they may not
necessarily have an understanding of the broader
school-to-work agenda within the school system.
The primary advocacy
organizations involved with assuring successful
transition of youth with disabilities from school-to-work
will be parent organizations. Since school-to-work and
transition are primarily concerned with school-aged
youth, parents take a primary responsibility for
advocacy. Advocacy organizations are not typically
well-versed in large scale evaluation data systems nor
should they be expected to be. In addition, many advocacy
organizations are not clear on what policy tables to be
at to address employment concerns at the local and state
level. In fact, there are few local and State venues that
consider including people with disabilities in
policy-level discussions about employment. This is a
problem for both the disability advocacy community and
the general workforce development communities. The
disability advocacy community needs to assure their
presence in discussions related to employment issues and
to do so, the community needs to identify venues and
forums where this can occur. Similarly, the workforce
development people need to understand that people with
disabilities represent the single largest unemployed
population in the country and therefore have one of the
most vested interests in any workforce development
effort.
The problem here is the level at
which different organizations are working. While advocacy
organizations typically work at the grassroots level,
workforce development people work at the systems level so
it is no wonder they may find it difficult to find each
other, much less talk to each other.
Sharon Belli: I
guess that's why I said at this point it's almost
marketing school-to-work as a concept to other groups
that are involved in promoting services for this
population. So, I guess just in that they were included
as a category on the local partnership survey, I just
raised it as an area where I didn't see any figures
attached to it, any numbers. So, I just leave it at that.
Participant:
I'm from the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational
Rights (PACER) Center in Minneapolis. I think one of the
issues about involving advocacy organizations is that
even at the local level, there are many who are concerned
about employment possibilities and opportunities for
youth with disabilities, but they have been deliberately
excluded from local partnerships. I am not having
information shared as to where the meetings are, nor does
the state organization or partnership have representation
of individuals with disabilities or advocacy
organizations speaking for people with disabilities. I
think it's a real issue. It goes back to what was said
when you include all the variables in developing your
evaluation tool, why weren't all the variables included
in developing the guidelines for the partnership? And I
recognize that would be a long list, but I'm tired of
being an add-on when it comes to advocating for youth
with disabilities.
Megan Dushin: Well,
I think this has been a great call. It's coming up to two
o'clock central time, so we're going to have to wrap it
up. I want to thank the panelists for presenting and
being available for questions from the audience, and
thank you all for joining us.
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