Customer Reviews

Transition to Postsecondary Education for Students With Disabilities

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Explaining the potential options legally available to people with disabilities after high school, this book has several good points.

Particularly for students enrolled in special education programs all throughout public school education, graduation from high school potentially becomes a confusing time.

Will the same services be available? Who will provide them? Special education services eligibility does not exist when entering college.

But the rules which DO cover college are an different set. As opposed to covering every type of every disability, they merely provide reasonable accommodation for 'qualified students'. Because a college does not have to accept every student within a community, it does not have to accomodate every student who happens to have a disability.

For those students whose parents were 'protecting' them from the larger world, the mandatory self-advocacy required in college (among other environments) might initially feel confusing--or even scary.

But self-identification as a person with a disability is REQUIRED to obtain 'reasonable accommodation' regardless of where somebody is accepted and then enrolls. Particularly in that environment, a parent cannot 'advocate' irrespective of how 'good' their intentions previously were or are.

The 'college' chapters of this book are particularly well-written because in addition to stressing the self-advocacy, they correctly state that students are able to apply to and then enroll at any college where they get accepted. Disability services do not get provided as a 'favor' to any student on any campus, they are federally-required. Obtaining these disability services requires student proactivity from the begining of campus enrollment.

Self-advocacy is also required when paying visits to your local rehabilitation agency for the services which they can provide. These agencies assist with job training for college students but also work with people whose transition plans do not and will not include college. Here, an advocate is permitted to provide help--but the agencies tend to place emphasis on the 'client' to the greatest extent possible.

An especially helpful feature of this text has 'voices' of people undergoing the transition themselves speaking out about these experiences.

While the book is written as a 'text' for educators/potential educators, the approach also helps in a guide which should be made available for students themselves.

I feel that the authors should have actually made this guide directed at transitioning/soon-to-be transitioning students. They are, despite the law--being virtually 'dumped' after high school graduation in too many instances. Such a resource would prove invaluable in dramatically reducing the post-graduation confusion, and ultimately answering their own original thesis.