Transitions Among Young Children With Disabilities

• Between 2003-04 and 2004-05, 70 percent of children made a transition to a new program, grade, or school. Between 2004-05 and 2005-06, a total of 82 percent of children made a transition to a new program, grade, or school. Thirty-three percent underwent a change in both program (such as moving from one school to another) and grade (such as moving from preschool to kindergarten or kindergarten to first grade) between 2004-05 and 2005-06 (see figure A).
• Seven percent of children who made no grade transition, 12 percent of children who transitioned from preschool to kindergarten, and 31 percent of children who transitioned from kindergarten to first grade had not received tutoring in 2003-04, but did receive tutoring in 2004-05.
• Transitions are a time when changes in eligibility for services can occur. Twenty percent of children who transitioned from preschool to kindergarten were declassified (i.e., children who were receiving special education services but were no longer eligible) between 2003-04 and 2004-05, and 21 percent were declassified between 2004-05 and 2005-06. In contrast, of children who did not undergo a transition, 5 percent of children were declassified between 2003-04 and 2004-05; between 2004-05 and 2005-06, that figure was 9 percent (see table A).
• Data from children's transitions to kindergarten were combined across the 3 years of the PEELS study in order to explore this transition period. Based on teacher report, there were no statistically significant differences in the ease with which children transitioned to kindergarten by gender, race/ethnicity, household income, or primary disability. There were some statistically significant differences based on parent report of the ease of children's transition to kindergarten by demographics, however. For example, parents of Hispanic children were more likely than parents of Black or White children to report a somewhat hard or very hard transition to kindergarten (26%, 16%, and 13%, respectively).
• The support and involvement of schools in the process of transitioning to kindergarten was significantly associated with how easy the transition was perceived to be by parents and teachers. For example, 87 percent of parents and 86 percent of teachers reported that the transition was somewhat or very easy when the school initiated support to facilitate the transition across the 3 years of the PEELS study.
• Teachers were asked to indicate which of 11 specified strategies were used to help facilitate the child's transition to kindergarten. Across the 3 years of the PEELS study, strategies that were used by over 80 percent of teachers included receiving the child's records from his or her previous program (87%), encouraging parents and guardians to meet the child's new staff (86%), and receiving information about the child from his/her previous program (83%).
• For the combined kindergarten data, children who attended kindergarten in the same location as they had attended preschool had teachers who reported significantly higher use of multiple transition strategies than children who had attended some other program or had been at home: receiving children's previous records (91% compared to 85%), the previous program providing information about the child (90% compared to 79%), someone from the current program meeting with staff of the sending program (68% compared to 50%), and someone from the program visiting the child's previous setting (62% compared to 31%). Teachers were significantly more likely to use more strategies when children transitioned from a preschool program within the same school compared to those who came from a different school (see table A). When children transitioned from a preschool program within the same school, on average, teachers reported using six strategies, whereas teachers reported using five strategies when children came from a different school.
• Previous research indicated a positive correlation between the number of strategies that teachers use and transition outcomes (Schulting, Malone, and Dodge 2005). Across the 3 years, kindergarten teachers used, on average, five strategies to facilitate the child's transition to kindergarten. However, the number of strategies used by kindergarten teachers varied significantly by district size, metropolitan status, and district wealth. Forty percent of teachers who worked in very large districts, compared to 58 percent of teachers who worked in medium districts, used six or more strategies to facilitate transitions. Thirty-two percent of teachers who worked in very low wealth districts used six or more strategies compared to 52 percent of teachers who worked in high wealth districts (see table B).
• Across the 3 years of the study, PEELS kindergarten teachers who were special educators used, on average, significantly more transition strategies than regular education classroom teachers. Special educators, on average, reported using six strategies, whereas regular education teachers, on average, reported using five strategies.