What Are The Key Components Of A High School-To-Adult Transition Plan?

Oct. 23, 2008 -- Question: What are the key components of a high school-to-adult transition plan?

Answer: A high school transition plan is the time in the student's life when they, the student themselves, and the teachers and the parents and anyone that is working with that student sit down and start mapping out the final years of the high school, so that the transition into the adult years is going to be a smooth hand off. There's a lot of components that need to be in a transition plan. There needs to be some good solid evaluation of the various interests of the person so that the jobs that they line this person up for is going to be something that they're going to enjoy in their adult years.

They need to have an evaluation of their adaptive skills, and their cognitive skills, of their social skills. It's a time in their life where they're really starting to gel all of the educational process into this handoff into their adult life.

Transition plans are usually looked at and worked on during the high school years and vocation rehabilitation becomes involved in this process as well. But a transition plan should not be viewed as only to be done during the high school years. They are ones that should be done even earlier than that so that every single year the goals that are identified for that IEP are then worked on and data are collected on the progress for those goals so that by the time they get to the high school, a lot of those decisions are already made and the people that are working with this student and the student themselves know where the end result will be and what this person will be doing as an adult.

So that that transition plan is exceptionally important and crucial to the end years of the educational world, but it's truly the beginning of their adult years. And so everything needs to be meshed together during those years to come up with a good solid plan that's going to be effective for the student over the years into those adult years.