Over the past three decades, transition practices research has demonstrated that post-school outcomes of students with disabilities improve when multiple stakeholders and organizations work together to implement a broad perspective of transition planning, or transition-focused education.
This concept represents the perspective that “transition planning” is the fundamental basis of education that guides development of students’ educational programs – including strategies that keep them in school – rather than an “add-on” activity for students with disabilities when they turn age 14 or 16.
The impact of transition-focused education is greatly enhanced when service systems and programs connect and support the implementation and application of such learning. The Taxonomy for Transition Programming 2.0 (Kohler, Gothberg, Fowler, and Coyle, 2016) builds upon the earlier work and provides research-based practices for implementing transition-focused education.