Here are the student outcomes that were achieved in the area of spost-secondary and employability skills, and the practices and systems that helped students achieve these outcomes.
Who are we?

  • Hawthorne Country Day School, Approved Private School, students with autism, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, speech and language impairment, and other health impaired, 5 to 21
  • Mount Pleasant Central School District, district-wide
  • White Plains High School, White Plains Public Schools

What are the long-term outcomes for our students with disabilities that we are striving to achieve so that every student is independent and successful in school, career, and community?

  • Each and every individual will reach his or her maximum potential in the least restrictive environment.
  • Students see themselves as individuals, with capabilities, ambitions and personalities.
  • Every student engaged in self-advocacy and self-determined learning.
  • Students are successful post-high school and lifelong employability skills
  • Students are successful in post-school real life situations

What outcomes have our students with disabilities already achieved?

  • Students with disabilities collaborated with job coaches and employers to develop goals leading to authentic workplace skills, and paid employment.
  • 25% of our Work Experience participants obtained employment
  • Students with disabilities increased engagement in self-advocacy and self-determined learning
  • Students with disabilities have increased time on task and time working independently
  • Students increased work in collaborative groups

What systems and practices that were implemented to achieve our student outcomes?

  • Use of job site assessments to identify students’ strengths and areas where improvement is indicated.
  • Infusion of CDOS Standards in the Work Experience curriculum
  • Teaching students job interview skills and social skills needed at job situations, including writing resumes, managing money and time management, and traveling independently
  • Use of task analysis and modeling strategies by teachers and teaching assistants
  • Increasing participation in career counseling,
  • Teaching retail technology, money exchange, customer services through the school based enterprise and in a retail setting,
  • Conducting transition assessments in partnership with students so they can identify their skills
  • Ensuring students’ transition plans drive the IEP through the Measurable Post-Secondary Goals and Present Levels of Performance
  • Completing weekly job evaluations and discussing them in class
  • Setting clear weekly goal in 1:1 conferences with students
  • Explicitly teaching about how to respond in problematic job situations
  • Transition planning student conferences.

What structures allowed us to support staff in implementing these systems and practices?

  • Professional development support for staff
  • Continually communicating to staff that evidence based practice is endemic to what we do
  • Support in engaging in data driven programming
  • NYS Program Development Grant to Prepare Students with Disabilities to Exit School with Work Readiness Skills
  • Examining practices to ensure alignment with NTACT and NYS Blueprint for Improved Results for Students with Disabilities concepts

What are we doing next to continue working toward achieving our long-term student outcomes?

  • Expansion of work experience and school enterprise options
  • Connection of students to transition services and ACCES-VR
  • Further supporting teachers in how to teach students to create and monitor their own goals
  • Implementing a plan to maintain the program’s integrity as the NYS Program Development Grant comes to an end
  • Expansion of entire Transition Program
  • Measurement of effectiveness of the WBL program using multiple approaches
  • Analysis of post-graduation employment status
  • Examination of year-to-year performance trends of the students on NYS Student Employability Profiles for information on skills acquired and increasing independence
  • Extension of Blueprint Survey to earlier grades and to families

If you want to learn about the specific outcomes, practices and systems implemented in each of these schools, visit the google folder at Student Outcomes Conference.

There is a folder for each school with a summary description of their work and the handouts they provided at our 2018 Student Outcome Conference.
If you would like to read similar summaries of student outcomes in other areas of performance, follow the links here: