Excerpted from Chapter 14 of Teaching Students with Mental Retardation: Providing Access to the General Curriculum, by Michael L. Wehmeyer, Ph.D., with Deanna J. Sands, Ed.D., Earle Knowlton, Ed.D., & Elizabeth B. Kozleski, Ed.D.

Copyright © 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94-142) required that the state provide a free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities between the ages of 3 and 21 residing within the United States, except when its application to those people would be inconsistent with state law or practice. In most states, students with mental retardation are eligible for services from the public school system after their same-age peers have graduated. High-quality educational services and supports for students in this age group (in the absence of a general curriculum) have characteristics similar to community-based learning characteristics. Wehmeyer, Bolding, Yeager, and Davis (2001) identified seven quality indicators that should form the core of any educational services and supports for students with mental retardation ages 18-21.

Appropriate educational services for students with mental retardation ages 18-21 are provided in an age-appropriate environment allowing for social interaction and promoting community inclusion. Because the typical high school is no longer an age-appropriate environment for students between the ages of 18 and 21, such educational supports need to be provided in environments that are age-appropriate and promote interaction with same-age peers. A number of settings meet these requirements, and the most prevalent is community or junior college. This setting is normative for students in this age range, and community colleges frequently offer unique learning opportunities. Other settings in which quality services have been provided include university and 4-year college campuses, community-based businesses and agencies, or even storefronts in shopping malls or other areas of high public concentration.

However, moving educational services to an age-appropriate setting is only the first step. It is very easy to set up fundamentally segregated programs within age-appropriate settings. This problem is partially offset by another indicator of quality education services, that the majority of students’ education by ages 18-21 should be community-based. However, for those times during which the student is on the campus or in a facility, quality services should provide opportunities for inclusive education. Innovative schools have found that one way to ensure inclusion is to make the facility home to a wide array of activities (e.g., neighborhood or school group meetings, blood drives, polling). The emphasis in high-quality programs is to get students into their community and to make the point of service delivery a place in which the community can congregate as well.

High-quality educational services are ecologically valid and community-based. One tenet of community-based instruction was that as students with mental retardation got older, they would receive progressively and proportionally more of their instruction in community-based settings that approximated the environment in which they might live, work, learn, or play as adults. Students ages 18-21 should spend most if not all of their time learning employment-related skills in work settings, living skills in homes, and recreation and leisure skills in the community.

High-quality services are outcomes-oriented. Transition services for students with disabilities need to be outcomes-oriented and include a wide array of outcomes, such as employment, living, postsecondary education, and leisure outcomes. Most such transition-related efforts primarily emphasize employment and residential outcomes. However, high-quality services also need to focus on recreation and leisure outcomes and postsecondary education opportunities. Moreover, personal outcomes are the best indicators of program quality.

Academic instruction in high-quality programs is functional and focused on outcomes. Students at this age continue to have many academic and content-oriented learning needs, and many parents continue to request instruction in academic and content areas. As such, educators must provide this instruction in ways that promote functional skills in inclusive settings. Providing services in a college setting, particularly in community and junior colleges, equals opportunities to gain access to more basic and sometimes remedial classes with same-age peers.

High-quality services emphasize person-centered planning and active family involvement. The educational process for students must be individualized and have active participation from a range of key stakeholders.

High-quality services involve active participation of adult service providers in planning and implementation. Another component of high-quality services involves interagency collaboration in planning, particularly those agencies serving the student. This partnership is often difficult to form because of issues regarding financial liability. High-quality supports for students ages 18-21 with mental retardation have active involvement from service agencies and community businesses in which students may someday work or become customers.

High-quality services implement best practices in transition. This rather catch-all indicator simply communicates that educational services for students ages 18-21 with mental retardation are, at their core, transition-oriented, and the wealth of best practice strategies associated with effective transition services (e.g., job shadowing, job sampling, leisure training) should be present in services for students ages 18-21 as well.