SIS and Transition Planning for Students with Intellectual Disability

The impetus for using SIS for transition planning comes largely out of the requirements of The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and the transition requirements within that act. The SIS also meets the requirements of the Statement of Performance (SOP), a relatively new addition to the IDEA. Click here to read excerpts from IDEA on transition planning requirements.

Benefits of using SIS for transition planning
• Has all the domains required to successfully identify post-secondary support needs for a student with an intellectual disability including post-secondary education; vocational education; integrated employment; continuing and adult education; adult services; independent living; and community participation.

• Contains 28 additional areas on the Scale help gauge exceptional medical and behavioral needs of the student.

• Measures supports for a person in a community and is therefore a natural fit for planning post-secondary supports for a student in community settings.

• Is a norm-referenced tool as opposed to a check-list. The SIS was normed over 2 years on 1,308 people with varying degrees of intellectual disability from the ages of 16-72 within the United States and two provinces in Canada.

• Contains a ready-to-use graphical display of profile of high areas vs. low areas of support needs to help transition planners in planning and decision-making

• Measures support needs directly, and the explicit and direct information provided by the assessment scores takes the guessing out of the transition planning process. All items are clearly ranked by frequency, type, and duration of support required.

• Is a positive planning tool that focuses on the needs of a person as opposed to deficits, making the transition planning process optimistic and promising

• Available in convenient web-based format, which can be integrated into existing systems if needed.

To learn more about the SISOnline system, click here.

An author/professional’s perspective
Michael Wehmeyer, SIS author and also an award-winning special educator explains, "The beauty of SIS is that the instrument in its entirety, has all the domains required to successfully identify post-secondary support needs for a student with an intellectual disability. As the student gets ready to leave school, the Supports Intensity Scale presents itself as a wonderful tool to help professionals prepare the final planning document in conjunction with adult services as the student transitions into community living. As for the Statement of Performance, SIS is a logical tool to use for developing SOPs because by its very nature, SIS is specifically designed to gauge the support needs and life goals of a person with an intellectual disability, and therefore it can make recommendations on how students should achieve goals in the community.” Wehmeyer is Professor of Special Education at the University of Kansas.

Supports thinking for school systems
The success of SIS with adults with intellectual disabilities comes largely due to its move from a historic focus on deficits to measuring the needs, goals, and aspirations of a person. It would only be natural for the field to start this positive, supports-oriented thinking much earlier in life than adult services, and that such progressive thinking originate much earlier, while the child is still in the school system.

Contact us with questions!
If you are considering exploring SIS for Statement of Purpose planning or transition in general, please use this contact form to send an email to AAIDD.

To read an article from the SIS Vantage newsletter on IDEA, SIS, and transition planning, click here.