From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Assisting Students with Disabilities Transitioning from
High School

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Revae Moran, Director,
Education, Workforce and Income Security

Related GAO Work: GAO-12-594: Students with Disabilities: Better Federal
Coordination Could Lessen Challenges in the Transition from High School

Released: August 2012

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[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report; your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's August
2012. The transition out of high school to post-secondary education or
the workforce can be challenging, especially for students with
disabilities. Multiple federal agencies fund programs to support these
students through this transition. A group led by Revae Moran, a director
in GAO's Education, Workforce, and Income Security team, recently
reviewed the challenges students may face accessing transition services
as well as the level of coordination among the different programs. GAO's
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Revae to talk about what they learned.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are some of the unique challenges that students
with disabilities face as they move from high school into the next stage
of their lives?

[Revae Moran: ] Well the transition from high school to employment or to
college can be difficult for any student, but those with disabilities
face unique challenges such as the need for special services. And one of
the things that happens is while they're still in high school, they're
provided with a customized plan that weighs out their goals and then the
services they might need in meeting those goals. However, once they
graduate from high school, then they have to apply to programs as an
adult, a multitude of programs that can help meet those service needs,
but they have to apply to them individually so it can be a very
confusing thing for students with disabilities.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And the number of these programs and services are
offered by federal agencies. Can you talk about some of these in
particular that assist in this process?

[Revae Moran: ] Sure, there are four primary agencies that provide these
services and there's a number of different programs. The agencies are
the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Labor, and
Social Security Administration. And the services that they provide, the
types of transition services, can be related to education; they can be
tutoring such as tutoring, or it can be things that help them find
employment such as job training, or it can be things that help them with
support services such as transportation.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked in part at some of the issues
students with disabilities and their families encounter when they're
trying to access these services. What did you find there?

[Revae Moran: ] What we found was that it can be a confusing time for
both the students and their parents because the different programs have
different eligibility requirements and different definitions so that
just can be very hard for them to navigate. Another challenge is that
often the students are wait-listed for services. An example of that is
the Department of Education's Vocational Rehabilitation service.
When—they right now are operating under an order of selection which
means that the students with the most severe disabilities have to be
served first before others can be, so they may be on waiting lists for
years sometimes.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also reviewed the degree to which these four
departments that administer these programs coordinate with one another.
Can you talk about your findings there?

[Revae Moran: ] Yes. One of the things that we found is that they do
some coordination and, for example, they all belong to a work group that
helps develop guidance and assures information. And there are some
other...a lot of other coordination now efforts out there. However,
there's no big overarching strategy that talks about outcomes and
defines those outcomes for students with disabilities and that's what we
would like to see. There’s a lot of barriers to coordination for the
agencies too. For one of the things they don't have is a common outcome
goal for the students and for example; it may mean that they’re having
to work across purposes. Labor, for example, really emphasizes
employment. And then Social Security Administration, for them to qualify
for Supplemental Security Income Benefits, they have to show that they
are limited in their ability to work. So that sometimes works against
each other.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] I imagine some of these issues inform GAO's
recommendations in this report. Can you talk about what those are?

[Revae Moran: ] Absolutely. We're recommending that the four agencies
that I mentioned develop an overall strategy for federal interagency
coordination for transition services and we want them to address three
different things. One is to work toward common outcome goals for these
students and providing the transition services. We want them to increase
awareness of the types of services that are available and in which
agencies those services are located. We also want them to access how
effective their coordination efforts are in providing these services.
And then as part of that, we want them to identify any legislative
barriers that they have in doing that type of coordination so that they
can then let congress know what those legislative barriers are.

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