Transition Assessment
Program Placement

How can I as a CTE teacher help the ARD committee improve placement of students?

• The primary reason that students with disabilities are so often enrolled in CTE classes is because ARD committees see your programs as the best avaiable means for preparing students with disabilities for productive lives.
• As indicated earlier currently students with disabilities in CTE classrooms number over 25%. We believe that this number will continue to rise in the future. There is therefore a recurring need to prepare these students effectively. In a perfect world these students will be interested in pursuing post secondary goals related to your program and will possess the aptitudes, skills, personality characteristics necessary for success in that area.
• TEA’s Commissioner rules’ concerning special provisions for CTE programs state that, “When determining placement in a CTE classroom the ARD committee shall consider the content of the individual transition plan, the IEP and the classroom supports. Enrollment numbers should not create a harmful effect on learning for a student with or without disabilities.”
• Unless CTE teachers get actively involved in the IEP process we will be unable to achieve the perfect world even with the support of the Commissioner’s rules.
• Even if an accurate transition assessment gives us a complete picture of a student’s characteriestics an ARD committee may still make an inappropriate placement or fail to specify necessary support services for teacher and student success. This can be avoided if the committee is made aware of basic skills necessary to succeed in any given CTE program.
• As CTE teachers you should educate the ARD committee about your program as well as involve yourself in writing IEP goals for students.
• The first step in educating the ARD committee about your program is developing an entry-level basic skills inventory. This is a checklist of the generalizable skills that students entering your program should possess in order to be successful.
  • Using this checklist the ARD committee can compare the student’s transition assessment results with your program’s entry level basic skills set and identify strengths that can be built upon and weaknesses that may require coordination of services from general education, special education or other outside sources as well as necessary accommodations.
  • Greenan’s Generalizable Skills Curriculum can be effectively used to create the inventory. However you know your program best.
  • Generalizable skills are cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills that are basic to, necessary for success in and transferable within CTE programs. Specifically, the four skill areas include:
    • Mathematics
    • Communication
    • Interpersonal relations
    • Reasoning
• Comparing your curriculum to this list of skills will allow you to develop the entry-level basic skills inventory for your program. Please ensure that only those skills that a student needs to successfully begin your curriculum is included.
• Do not include skills that you will want your students to own when they complete your program nor those you do not want to teach.

Application Work Session

Write a list of the skills that you would include on your entry level basic skills inventory for your program. Click here for a sample form.

• The ARD Committee should compare your program’s basic skills inventory to the student’s transition assessment results to identify their strengths and weaknesses that can be then used in determining appropriate placement, goals, modifications and accommodations.
• After you develop it, distribute your inventory to counselors, school psychologists, staff memebers who are regulars on ARD committees, so that they will have the information early in the process. Also provide the inventory to prospective students and their parents.

If I develop and distribute this list will the IEP committee use this as a placement tool so that I do not get so many students with disabilities?

Office of Civil Rights Rules prohibit the use of prerequisites to discriminate against students with disabilities. Furthermore, we should never set up artificial barriers to student entry into a program that they are interested in. The entry-level basic skills inventory is not a tool for exclusion. Its purpose is to give students and teachers a better a chance of success by identifying the modifications, accommodations and support services they will need. The inventory is also in line with a TEA Commissioner Rule – “planning for students with disabilities shall be coordinated among CTE, special education and state rehabilitation agencies and should include a coherent sequence of courses.”