The team uses age-appropriate transition assessments to learn about your child’s strengths, interests, preferences, skills, and support needs. This might include talking with your child, families, teachers, employers, or other people who know your child well.
Beginning at age 14, the school will begin to provide and administer transition assessments to your child. Transition assessments can be interviews, inventories, formal assessments that look at level of skill and informal assessments that are opinion or observational. Each year, the school will provide a minimum of two new transition assessments separate from any psychological or academic testing that may occur. These assessments are individually chosen for your child and their needs.
These assessments will look at your child's strengths, preferences, interests and needs to see what they currently are doing, thinking about or need to work on. Your child, yourself, school participants or agency participants can complete these assessments to create a bigger picture than from just one person. Assessments are age appropriate and should not repeat year after year.
Assessment: My Checklist for the School:
Give my child at least two new tests. I want to see fresh results from this school year that show what my child is interested in and what they are good at right now.
- Keep the conversation going. These shouldn't just be "one and done" tests. I want the school to keep checking in on my child’s progress throughout the year.
- Focus on my child. The tests shouldn't be generic. They need to be picked specifically for my child’s unique strengths and goals for the future.
Questions I can ask the team:
- "What two new assessments did you use this year to learn about my child's interests?"
- "How do these tests help us plan for what my child will do after high school?"
- "How are you changing these tests to make sure they actually fit my child’s specific needs?"
Goal: I want to make sure the school is using up-to-date information to help my child get ready for life after they graduate.