New Mexico Youth in Transition
Online Education Center
Welcome!
New Mexico's Transition Network, is pleased to bring you its first transition “short course" to introduce newcomers to the concepts and practices of secondary/transition services for youth with disabilities. Our first course is called "An Overview of Secondary Transition Services: an Online Short Course".
Primary support for this first short course comes from the New Mexico Public Education Department Special Education Bureau in concert with many other partners noted on the New Mexico Youth in Transition: Lifespan and Career Development website.
The course is adapted for New Mexico - with its richness as well as its challenges - in order to help the state's learning community acquire better understandings of secondary transition services, state and federal requirements, and the preparation that young adults should have to be ready for further learning, employment, and independent living as appropriate.
The intended audience includes folks who are learning about transition: secondary general and special educators (teachers, administrators, counselors, and assistants), parents/guardians, youth, adult agency partners, school board members, and others interested in creating quality futures for youth with disabilities. When ALL members of a young person's individualized planning team understand the purpose of transition planning and implement the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) transition requirements as intended, that young adult will have significantly improved adult outcomes. We have to keep working together to do this well, because at the current time, our youth are NOT achieving all that they should. Most recently, our statewide Annual Performance Report shows that our youth are:
- graduating with standard pathway diplomas at a 52% rate;
- dropping out at a .90% rate;
- benefiting from quality transition planning at a 94% rate;
- moving into further learning ONLY after high school at a 8.2% rate;
- moving into employment ONLY after high school at a 37.4% rate; and
- moving into BOTH further learning and employment after high school at a 41.9% rate (12.5% are not doing either).
We have much to learn and accomplish!
This short course is borrowed and adapted from the outstanding offerings of the IRIS Project at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, co-directed by Dr. Deborah Smith and Dr. Naomi Tyler, with their generous permission.
Upon completion of this short course, participants may download a certificate of completion.
