The College and Career Readines and Success Center closed on September 30,2019 because the grant cycle for the U.S. Department of Education Comprehensive Centers ended. The information on this website will no longer be updated. Visit www.air.org for updates on college and career readiness.
Submitted by Andrew Valent on
The National Longitudinal Studies and other data demonstrate how students with disabilities are lagging behind their peers. Students with disabilities graduate from high school at lower rates, attend and graduate from postsecondary institutions less frequently, and achieve lower rates of competitive employment.
This issue brief is intended to assist state policymakers in better understanding strategies to prepare students with disabilities and special needs for college and career. The brief provides context and background on the numbers of students with disabilities who are college and career ready; examines issues related to preparation and readiness for postsecondary education and careers; and includes examples of current programs and policies that help students with disabilities to successfully transition to college and career.
Submitted by Andrew Valent on
On March 25, the American Youth Policy Forum and the National High School Center offered a webinar titled, “Helping Students with Disabilities Transition to College and Careers.” This event brought together several leaders in the field of special ed
This report assesses the efficacy of specific types of school-based and work-based initiatives on students with disabilities. Data analysis was conducted with national longitudinal data. The results suggest that the various initiatives (job shadowing, mentoring, internships, career major etc) effectively facilitate vocational success for this population. School-based programs were associated with stable and full-time employment, and work-based programs typically increased the likelihood that youth with disabilities will gain employment with fringe benefits.
This report provides a profile of 38 schools and details how these schools have implemented strategies to promote and advance college readiness. The report outlines each school, characteristics that make the school unique, and lessons learned from undertaking particular strategies. The report is organized into six sections: 1) alternative schools, 2) charter schools, 3) comprehensive schools, 4) early college high schools, 5) magnet schools, and 6) private schools. In several cases, schools may have utilized more than one strategy to achieve their goal.
This series of policy briefs from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) discuss a variety of information that school exit exams reveal about student achievement. The first brief discusses the shift in ways of determining how students earn a high school diploma - previously using minimum competency exams to current and future wide use of end-of-course exams. The second brief discusses use of exit exam pass rates to determine gaps in low performing students.
This report from the National Center for Learning Disabilities discusses the educational attainment of students with learning disabilities. The author examines the effects of learning disabilities on students within the K-12 system with a focus on the struggle to attain grade level standards and graduation rate and provides recommendations that include transition planning activities and the use of technology to support students with learning disabilities.
This report provides information on transition services for students with disabilities as they moved toward postsecondary pathways. Four federal agencies, the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Labor, and the Social Security Administration all provide transition services, but these efforts are not well-coordinated around a common goal.
This article presents a four-year case study on the impact that an urban college preparatory charter high school had on the postsecondary outcomes of its graduates. Through analysis of staff and teacher interviews, the impact that logistical constraints and staff turnover had on the implementation of the school’s mission to prepare educationally and socially disadvantaged students for college was revealed.
Freshman year course performance—more than background characteristics such as race, gender, socioeconomic status or prior achievement—predict which students with disabilities are most at risk for dropping out of high school, according to a this report from the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research and the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. The report found that absences, course failures, course credits and GPA all can be used to accurately predict whether ninth-graders with disabilities will graduate from high school.
