Inside IES Research

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we discussed NCSER-funded research on transition support for students with disabilities with principal investigators Meg Grigal and Clare Papay. Transition services prepare students for life after school and can include activities such as job training, post-secondary education, and support for independent living and community participation. This research team’s project, Moving Transition Forward: Exploration of College-Based and Conventional Transition Practices for Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism, examines outcomes for two transition approaches: a college-based transition and the conventional approach provided by most local education agencies. In the interview below, the researchers discuss recent results and how this information can improve the quality of transition services for students with disabilities.

What is the purpose of your project? What motivated you to conduct this research?

The bulk of existing transition research reflects knowledge about conventional transition services, 

or those services received by students with disabilities in high schools. An alternative approach, called college-based transition services, has been around for over 20 years, providing students with intellectual disability and autism a chance to experience college while continuing to receive support through special education. We wanted to explore and compare these two types of transition experiences and assess the outcomes for students. Using two existing datasets, our project conducted a series of interrelated analyses to look more closely at the transition services students with intellectual disability and/or autism (ID/A) are accessing and the association with youth outcomes in employment. Our hope is that our findings will contribute to the knowledge base on research-based college and career preparation for youth with ID/A.

Could you explain the difference between the two transition approaches (college-based and conventional) you are examining and how each prepares students for post-school life?

“Conventional transition services” is our way of describing the transition services typically provided to youth with disabilities across the United States. These services are documented in the data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012 (NLTS 2012). College-based transition services, also known as dual enrollment or concurrent enrollment, provide students with intellectual disability access to college courses, internships, and employment and other campus activities during their final 2 to 3 years of secondary education. These experiences enable students to participate in career planning with a person-centered planning approach, enroll in college classes for educational and personal enrichment, engage in social activities alongside their college peers, and participate in community-based, paid work experiences that align with their employment goals.

What do the results from your research say about the employment outcomes and other transition outcomes of students with intellectual disability and autism participating in these transition programs?

To be blunt, our findings tell us that conventional transition services are not supporting students with ID/A to become employed after high school. We found a very low prevalence of school-based predictors of post-school success for students receiving conventional transition services. As an example, in our analysis of data from NLTS 2012, we found only 32% of youth with ID/A had paid employment in the previous 12 months. Paid employment in high school is a strong predictor of post-school employment. Additionally, there was low prevalence of other critical transition activities, including self-determination/self-advocacy, self-care/independent living skills, occupational courses, and work-study. Our findings highlight points of stagnation in access to college and career preparation for students with ID/A. Past low engagement rates in college preparation activities may have been attributed to the limited access youth with ID/A have had to positive employment outcomes and poor access to postsecondary education.

On a more promising note, when we look at data on students with ID/A who are enrolled in college-based transition programs, the picture is much brighter. We’ve found moderate to high prevalence of activities reflecting important predictors of post-school success (including­ paid employment while in high school, interagency collaboration, and learning skills in community settings). Students in college-based transition programs are enrolling in courses for college credit and taking courses to help them prepare for careers. These students are leaving K-12 education in a much better position to successfully be employed after high school than many of their peers who are receiving conventional transition services.

Based on what you have learned, what are the implications for practice and policy?

With increased access and opportunities to pursue further education after high school, youth with ID/A need college preparation activities to be a part of their standard education experience. Our findings suggest college-based transition services offer an approach that addresses both employment and college preparation. However, the availability of college-based transition programs depends upon whether school districts have established partnerships with a college or university. Greater availability of college-based transition services would provide the field with a better understanding of the essential elements of practice and associated outcomes of this approach. Our findings also show the need for substantial improvement in the access to college and career preparation for youth with ID/A in conventional transition services. Finally, these studies highlight the need for additional and more robust data in federal data systems reflecting information about the transition experiences of students with intellectual disability, autism, and other developmental disabilities. We need to know what their experiences between age 18-22 look like, how inclusive these experiences are, and what outcomes they achieve after they leave K-12 education.

How can families find more information regarding college-based transition programs in their area?

We are glad you asked! The Think College website has a College Search feature that includes all the college and university programs enrolling students with ID/A in the United States, including those who are working with transitioning youth. This is a great way for families to explore local options. When options don't exist, we encourage families to speak with their school administrators to work on developing partnerships with local colleges or universities. Think College has many resources about college-based transition available on our website. Additionally, our national help desk is always available to answer questions or offer help to those seeking information about inclusive higher education and college-based transition services. Send us questions at thinkcollegeta@gmail.com

Many thanks to Drs. Grigal and Papay for sharing their work with our readers! If you want to learn more about this project, including the results of their research, please visit the following website: https://thinkcollege.net/projects/mtf.

Meg Grigal is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. At the Institute, she is co-director of Think College, a national organization focused on research, policy, and practice in inclusive higher education. Clare Papay is a senior research associate at the Institute for Community Inclusion.

This blog was produced by Shanna Bodenhamer, virtual student federal service intern at IES and graduate student at Texas A&M University, and Akilah Nelson, program officer for NCSER’s Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living program.

Dual enrollment improves student college going and postsecondary success, but practitioners need help in understanding the impact of dual enrollment and in learning strategies associated with effective and equitable implementation. Under the auspices of the IES-funded Evaluation of Career and College Promise (CCP) project, the North Carolina Community College System suggested hosting a conference to build knowledge and capacity in the field about dual enrollment. The Evaluation of CCP is a partnership with the SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the North Carolina Community College System, and the RAND Corporation. In addition to the research goals—which involve looking at the implementation, impact, and cost of North Carolina’s dual enrollment program—the project also has a goal of capacity development for the agencies and for practitioners. As part of meeting this last goal, the project recently hosted a conference on Dual Enrollment: Accelerating Educational Attainment (DE21) with over 1,000 registrants from North Carolina and around the country.      

Julie Edmunds, the project’s principal investigator, discusses the DE21 conference.

Why host a conference on dual enrollment?

This was the brainchild of our partners at the North Carolina Community College System. They wanted to create an opportunity where researchers and practitioners could gather and share lessons learned from their respective work. The NC Community College System expected that we would be learning a lot from our project that we would want to share; they also knew that the people in the trenches had many valuable insights to help bridge the gap between research and practice. Because existing research shows that not all groups of students have the same access to dual enrollment, the project team decided collectively that the conference should have a strong focus on equity and to use the conference as a way to communicate and discuss strategies to support equity.

What happened at the conference?

We had a total of 40 sessions across two full days. There were dynamic keynote speakers, including Karen Stout from Achieving the Dream, and panels that discussed dual enrollment from the policy, research, student and parent perspectives. Although there was a strong North Carolina focus, there were sessions from other states such as Massachusetts, Texas, Indiana, and Ohio.

Conference presentations were organized into five themes: expanding access and equity, fostering college attainment, ensuring a successful transition to college and careers, preparing students for dual enrollment, and supporting success in dual enrollment courses.

The CCP study team presented findings from our evaluation of North Carolina’s dual enrollment pathways. We looked at individual and school-level factors associated with dual enrollment participation, such as student demographics, school size, locale, percentage of students from underrepresented minority groups, academic achievement, and workforce-orientation of students. Student socioeconomic level did not affect participation in dual enrollment. We also presented preliminary impacts of North Carolina’s three different dual enrollment pathways (college transfer, Career and Technical Education, and Cooperative Innovative High Schools or early colleges). Results from these three pathways showed that CCP participants had better high school outcomes such as higher school graduation rates and were more likely to enroll in postsecondary education. In addition, there were multiple sessions sharing research results from other states.

There were many presentations from practitioners that focused on topics like rigorous instruction, advising, participation of students with disabilities, creating strong secondary-postsecondary partnerships, using high school teachers as college instructors, among others. I need to give a huge shoutout to Katie Bao from the NC Community College System, who shepherded us all through the conference planning and implementation process.

What was the impact of the pandemic?

When we originally planned for the conference, we thought it would be in person. After the pandemic hit, we decided (as many other organizations did) to host it virtually. This made the conference much more accessible to a national audience, and we had participants and presenters from around the country.

What if someone missed the conference?

Another benefit of a virtual conference is that we are able to share all the sessions from the meeting. Please visit our site on YouTube to listen to the conference. 

What comes next?

Our study work continues, and we will share the results in a variety of ways, including through briefs and journal articles. We are also planning to host a second conference in 2023 and expect that it will have a virtual component so that it can continue to be available to a national audience.

Dr. Julie Edmunds is a Program Director at the SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In addition to being the PI on the Evaluation of Career and College Promise, she is one of the leading researchers on early college, a model that combines high school and college.

The college pipeline from start to finish is an extraordinarily complex process with numerous decision points, options, and obstacles. Students from advantaged social backgrounds are more likely than those from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend schools and colleges staffed with advisers and support staff that have time and resources to assist them. They may also draw on relationships with family, adults in their communities, or knowledgeable peers for assistance in navigation decisions. For students without such supports, the sequence of choices may become so overwhelming that they respond by delaying decisions or making poor choices that lead to sizable delays in their degree progression. With these challenges in mind, IES has funded three information and advising initiatives that draw on insights from researchers, practitioners, and the research literature.

Technical Working Group Meeting

In July 2019, NCER convened a technical working group of 14 researchers and practitioners for a set of conversations structured around three intervention strategies that have garnered substantial attention over the last 5 years: nudges and other light-touch informational campaigns; intensive, proactive coaching and advising; and comprehensive approaches that comprise advising and other supports such as technology and financial incentives. Researchers and practitioners shared perceptions about the effectiveness of each strategy, its relevance to targeted student populations, and conditions for implementation. At the end of the day, working group members provided recommendations (see the Technical Working Group Meeting Summary for a full list), including the following:  

• Institutions should help determine what strategies get tested, apply for research grants, and participate in the research as it progresses.
• Research is needed that addresses the large amount of information that students face and that identifies the types of information that students respond to and act on.
• Replication studies should be designed to measure the effectiveness of promising intervention strategies for specific student groups, with the goal of enhancing effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Practice Guide on Effective Advising for Postsecondary Students

In October 2021, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) released a Practice Guide on Effective Advising for Postsecondary Students. The practice guide includes four evidence-based recommendations designed for an audience of administrators and staff at community colleges, 4-year institutions, and other public or private technical colleges who are responsible for designing and/or delivering advising to students:

• Intentionally design and deliver comprehensive, integrated advising that incorporates academic and non-academic supports to empower students to reach their educational goals.
• Transform advising to focus on the development of sustained, personalized relationships with individual students throughout their college career.
• Use mentoring and coaching to enhance comprehensive, integrated advising in ways that support students’ achievement and progression.
• Embed positive incentives in intentionally designed advising structures to encourage student participation and continued engagement.

Gap Analysis of Information and Advising Research and Practice

In March 2020, the Lead Team of the College Completion Network began a project aimed at identifying gaps in the research evidence base for information and advising strategies. The project is organized into three parts:

1. A systematic review of the research literature, documenting evidence of the effect of information and advising policies, practices, and programs on student outcomes
2. A scan of information and advising policies, practices, and programs that colleges use to improve student outcomes
3. A gap analysis to compare the findings from the scan to the findings from the systematic review to look for effective practices that are not widely implemented and promising practices in the field that have not been evaluated

The team plans to report its full set of findings by December 2021. College Completion Network study descriptions are available here: https://collegecompletionnetwork.org/studies.

This blog is the second in a blog series on Effective Postsecondary Interventions that highlights interventions with evidence of effectiveness generated through IES-funded research. For the first blog in the series, please see here.

Written by James Benson (James.Benson@ed.gov), a Program Officer for Postsecondary Education within NCER’s Policy and Systems Division, and Felicia Sanders (Felicia.Sanders@ed.gov), a Program Officer for the What Works Clearinghouse within NCEE’s Knowledge Use Division.

Accessibility to job opportunities has long been a challenge for individuals with disabilities. In 2020, people with disabilities had a much higher unemployment rate (12.6%) than those without a disability (7.9%). To raise awareness about disability employment issues and celebrate the contributions of workers with disabilities, National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) is held every October. The 2021 theme for NDEAM is “America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion,” which underscores the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have access to employment as the nation recovers from the pandemic.

NCSER supports research related to career readiness and employment for students with disabilities through the Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living (Transition) research program. Since its inception in 2006, NCSER has invested over $58 million in the Transition program and the portfolio has grown to 38 research grants. To encourage additional research in the important but under-studied area, NCSER also competed the Career and Technical Education for Students with Disabilities (CTE) special topic in FY 2019 and FY 2020, awarding three research grants totaling around $3 million.

Below are examples of recently funded Transition and CTE studies that are exploring, developing, or evaluating programs, policies, and practices aimed to help improve career readiness and employment outcomes for students with disabilities.

• Exploring relationships between college and career readiness, self-determination, and transition planning among adolescents with and without disabilities (PI: Allison Lombardi, University of Connecticut) This project aims to establish measurable constructs of college and career readiness by exploring extant data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study 2012.
• Supported College and Career Readiness (SCCR) for Secondary Students with Emotional and Behavioral Problems (PI: Lee Kern, Lehigh University) Through this project, the research team is developing and pilot testing a multi-component program that augments typical school-based college and career readiness activities.
• CTE Teachers and Long-Term Outcomes for Students with Disabilities (PI: Dan Goldhaber, University of Washington) This project aims to examine the relationship between effectiveness in career and technical education for students with disabilities and student outcomes, such as postsecondary enrollment and employment.
• Understanding the Antecedents of STEM Career and Technical Education Coursetaking for High School Students with Learning Disabilities (PI: Michael Gottfried, University of Pennsylvania) Through this project, the research team is investigating whether participation in applied STEM career and technical education courses in high school is related to students with learning disabilities pursuing and persisting in STEM majors and/or careers.
• Moving Transition Forward: Exploration of College-Based and Conventional Transition Practices for Students with Intellectual Disability and Autism (PI: Meg Grigal, University of Massachusetts, Boston) This study aims to examine and compare critical aspects of two transition approaches—a college-based transition experience and a conventional high school or community-based transition experience—and examine the associations between involvement in those programs and student employment outcomes for students with intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorder.\
• College and Career Readiness for Transition (CCR4T): Development and Validation of a Student Measure (PI: Allison Lombardi, University of Connecticut) The research team in this project is developing and validating the College and Career Readiness for Transition (CCR4T), a measure of the perceptions of high school students with disabilities of their own college and career readiness.

NCSER also plans to support additional research for students with disabilities with a new grant competition, Research to Accelerate Pandemic Recovery in Special Education, funded through the American Rescue Plan. This grant competition will fund research that addresses pandemic recovery, including recovery relevant to career readiness.

For more information about NDEAM as well as ideas for celebrating this month, please see https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/initiatives/ndeam.

Written by Akilah Swinton Nelson, Program Officer at National Center for Special Education Research. For more information about the Transition to Postsecondary Education, Career, and/or Independent Living and Career and Technical Education for Students with Disabilities topic areas, contact Akilah at akilah.nelson@ed.gov.

IES supports rigorous research that can provide scientific evidence on how best to address our nation’s most pressing education needs. As part of the Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) principles, IES-funded researchers are encouraged, and in some cases required, to conduct a cost analysis for their projects with the intended goal of supporting education agencies’ decision-making around the adoption of programs, policies, or practices. 

The Cost Analysis in Practice (CAP) Project is a 3-year initiative funded by IES to support researchers and practitioners who are planning or conducting a cost analysis of educational programs and practices. This support includes the following freely available resources.

• Resources developed by the CAP Project
  • Introductory resources on cost analysis including Standards and Guidelines 1.1, an infographic, a video lecture, and FAQs.
  • Tools for planning your cost analysis, collecting and analyzing cost data, and reporting your results.
  • A Help Desk for you to submit inquiries about conducting a cost analysis with a response from a member of the CAP Project Team within two business days.
• Other resources recommended by the CAP Project
  • Background materials on cost analysis
  • Guidance on carrying out a cost analysis
  • Standards for the Economic Evaluation of Educational and Social Programs
  • Cost analysis software

The CAP Project is also involved in longer-term collaborations with IES-funded evaluation projects to better understand their cost analysis needs. As part of this work, the CAP Project will be producing a set of three blogs to discuss practical details regarding cost studies based on its collaboration with a replication project evaluating an intervention that integrates literacy instruction into the teaching of American history. These blogs will discuss the following:

• Common cost analysis challenges that researchers encounter and recommendations to address them
• The development of a timeline resource for planning a cost study
• Data collection for a cost study

The CAP Project is interested in your feedback on any of the CAP Project resources and welcomes suggestions for additional resources to support cost analysis. If you have any feedback, please fill out a suggestion form at the bottom of the Resources web page.