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Career-focused services for students with disabilities at community colleges

This report examines the efforts of community colleges to function as intermediaries in meeting the local workforce development needs of employers and promoting career opportunities and job attainment for students, including those with disabilities. The research for this report was conducted in two stages. The first stage involved analysing state-level policies that affect job attainment for students with disabilities and gathering recommendations from key state-level leaders on community colleges with promising practices in six states. The second stage involved visiting colleges in five of these states and conducting guided discussions with key staff at each site. The study revealed that: many community college initiatives link workforce and economic development in each state, but disability services are not always in the mix; postsecondary access, academic success, and classroom accommodations are the primary focus within disability services; philanthropic investments are important drivers of change; there was little identifiable state-level coordination of services for students with disabilities and workforce development or career services; community colleges are more accessible for students with disabilities than four year colleges and universities; and funding for students with disabilities is believed to be inadequate. Finally, innovative programs and practices that help students with disabilities attain positive employment outcomes are identified at the 12 community colleges visited during the course of this project. The focus is on practices that promote educational access and success and job attainment after college. Colleges in this report tend to compartmentalise services for students with disabilities and rarely align these services with other services and programs that they provide. Furthermore, while offices for students with disabilities provide accessibility and classroom accommodation services, they often do not have the resources to provide other important services, such as targeted counseling and career services.

This report examines the efforts of community colleges to function as intermediaries in meeting the local workforce ...  Show Full Abstract  

Corporate authors: National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth (U.S.) (NCWD/Youth)
Workforce Strategy Center (U.S.) (WSC)
Date: 2009
Geographic subjects: North America; United States
Resource type: Report
Subjects: Career development; Workforce development; Disability;

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