>> Let me take a minute to introduce our speaker. Dr. James Martin is the Zarrow Family Chair and the Director of University of Oklahoma's Zarrow Center which, if you're in transition, you know about

this center. And that is part of the Department of Educational Psychology. His professional interest focus on the transition of youth with disabilities from high school into post-secondary educatory

and the workforce and what must be done to facilitate success in high school and post-secondary environments. Dr. Martin has authored 10 books, over a dozen chapters in edited books, numerous journal

articles, lesson packages which I think you'll talk about today, right? And transition assessments. He has conducted many presentations and training workshops at sites across the U.S., Canada and in

Europe. State, Federal and private sources including the Institute for Educational Sciences have provided him with almost $12 million to conduct his research and demonstration activities.

The Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Career Development and Transition awarded Dr. Martin the Oliver P. Kolstoe Award for his efforts to improve the quality and access to career and

transition services for people with disabilities. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Martin.

>> Hello, everyone. How many of you were here for the session earlier this morning? Oh, so a good share of you. A lot of new people here as well. Well, welcome. As Mark said, my name is Jim Martin.

I'm really happy to be here and in part because of what I'm about to talk to you about. We started working on this almost eight years ago now. So eight years later we launched this new transition

assessment on October 23rd. And so after eight years of working on something, it's really great to come talk to you and tell you that it's finished. Well, it's never really finished, but it's good

enough to work with now. And the over the years we'll be revising it and updating it and adding more information to it, but it's ready to use. And so what I want to do today is to talk to you about

this new transition assessment that we created called the Transition Assessment and Goal Generator and then share with you a lesson package that can be used to help teach some of the identified needs

that the assessment will come up with if students need these. So here we go.

So the focus I think upon transition planning, it comes down the most important part of the secondary IEP is the annual transition goal, the measuring annual goal that you put into the IEP that

relates back to the post-secondary goal. That is by far the most important part of the secondary IEP. And we know it's there because it needs to be there and if we build it to focus on a set of

foundational skills, generally non-academic foundational skills, they should and we will have data on this by the time summer's over, they should have a dramatic improvement on post-school outcomes.

So what we want to do with this particular session is to really look at the annual transition goals and how we can make these stronger to help teach kids a set of critical skills. And so when they

learn them, they can apply to all sorts of post-secondary behaviors. So today with our annual transition goals, those measuring goals that relate back to the post-secondary goal, oftentimes they're

not systematically developed; they don't match the transition assessment results that we obtain. They may not even match the needs that we identified earlier on in the IEP that we need to address

with their annual transition goals. Too often they're just simply pulled down from the menu and we just don't give enough thought to where those goals come from and what they really represent. And

the post-secondary goals, they change so much. They're so timid of the nature. You know, our instruction efforts are really geared toward those annual measuring goals that once kids learn those, it

will do a lot to help them become more successful outside of school.

So to build the annual transition goals there's a set of questions that we want students to answer. Question #1 is what do I need to learn now to live where I want after graduating from high school

and what do I need to learn now to learn where I want after graduating from high school and what do I want to learn now to work where I want after graduating from high school. So these three answers

should provide us the fodder, so to speak, or the behavior that we want to drop into our annual measuring goals to help kids attain their post-secondary goals. And that's just basic transition 101 is

their needs, match their goals, and their goals will help accomplish the post-secondary goals. But what I want you to think about that might be a little different is that instead of letting them be

any kind of goal because all behaviors aren't similar. All behaviors are not equal. There's some behaviors that we have that we know about now that seem to be associated with post-school employment

or further education must more so than a lot of other behaviors. So let's focus on those and turn those into our needs and into our strengths and into our annual transition goals.

So Amber McConnell and her colleagues in '13 identified, went through this really lengthy process to pull from the research literature student behaviors that are linked to post-secondary education or

post-secondary employment. Took those, clustered those together and they represent, if you will, foundational or pivotal behaviors that when learned, will apply to almost any type of post-secondary

goal. And then we took these behaviors and we organized them and created a new transition assessment called the Transition Assessment and Goal Generator. And there it is. It's kept at the Zarrow

Center website and we'll go through it here in depth here in a little bit. But it's an online assessment. It has a student/parents and professional version scored online that uses some really complex

scoring algorithms in the background to produce all of this. But where it fits into the transition scheme of things happens to be here. So we have our age of students as they go through transition

and we have employment and further education and independent living areas that we do assessment. And so where the TAGG fits, it fits as an employment assessment and it fits as a further education

assessment. And so the TAGG is one of these assessments that you can do annually as long as kids are in school to help identify their strengths, their needs, and to produce leads that can be turned

into the annual goals to help kids accomplish their post-secondary goals. Make sense so far? So that's where the TAGG fits and that's what the TAGG happened to be.

The TAGG had a lot of help over the last seven years. A big grant from the Institute for Education Sciences gave us the funding to be able to produce an assessment that is done how an assessment ought

to be done. And so along with the funding from the National Center for Special Education Research put in a lot of money from the Zarrow Center Endowments which where I'm at and direct and so we put

that together with a cast of many, many people to produce this assessment. And so the purpose of the TAGG -- it's a real simple purpose. To assess the non-academic skills that research identified as

being associated with employment or further education. Non-academic skills that are connected to post-school outcomes. And the students who were targeted are students who happened to have a

post-secondary employment or further education goal. So it's not geared toward a particular disability type or severity of disability, but it's geared towards students who have competitive employment

and/or further education a type of a post-secondary goal.

And then along with the behaviors themselves, we wanted the output. We wanted the results to be really easily used to make the IEP. Material that once the computer processes it all you have to do is

copy and paste it directly into the IEP because it's presented in the same language that you use to develop IEP's. So that's what we wanted to create. So I could spend probably five years describing

what we did over the last eight years, but we'll do it real brief what we went through. And so we went through the research literature and identified all these behaviors and then we clustered them

and we ended up with 15 versions later of the assessment. We had a TAGG with 10 constructs, 75 items, a parent, student and professional version. And then over three years we've had about 2600

people, parents, students, and professionals, field test the TAGG across 30 states and through that time we did a lot of analysis of all the collected data. Were any of you involved in some of the

field testing of the TAGG? We did have several people from Pennsylvania who worked with that. So I guess no one's here.

And so once we applied the factor analyses and the confirmatory factor analyses, we ended up with eight constructs, it went from 10 constructs to eight, and we ended up with 34 items from 75 items.

And basically what the factor analysis does, it tells us if the item belongs here, it belongs somewhere else, or maybe it doesn't belong at all. All based on what the user said with their scores.

It's really kind of magical how that works. It will even tell us, for instance, which one ought to stay and which one ought to go. We had two items, one could have been the student will develop a

plan to attain a goal. Then the second question would be the student would implement a plan to attain the goal. What the user said those are really the same questions. We thought they were distinctly

different so we threw the easier one out and focused on the more advanced or the terminate skill. So that's how we went from 75 items down to 34 items and eight constructs.

So what the TAGG does it assesses these skill areas. Strengths and limitations, do students know their strengths and limitations. It assesses disability awareness. Does the student understand their

disability? How do they use that information? Persistence, when they start working on a task or a goal do they keep with it? Interacting with others, self-explanatory. Goals setting and attainment,

do they set goals, do they develop a plan to attain their goals, do they implement their goals? Employment, expressed wanting a job, have had a job. Student involvement in the IEP, actually becoming

engaged in the IEP meeting, actively participating, maybe even leading their own IEP meeting with coaching of course. And support community. Do I know who to go to for support? Do I know who not to

go to for support? So those are the eight areas that the research literature told us are skills that are non-academic, foundational or pivotal skills that are associated with post-school employment

or further education.

So there's three versions of the TAGG; there's the professional version, there's the student version, and there's the family version. And they all parallel, just the language has changed and the

reading level has changed to be appropriate to the particular version. So three versions. The format, it's online written English. You can print it out if you want, take it by hand, but then the

scoring process is so complicated. None of us could do it by hand and so you have to manually input the information back into the website to score it. It has an audio button for each one for the

instructions as well as the items you can press and it will read to you. It has ASL videos for the instructions of the items. You can press on it. And a video screen will pop up and somebody is

signing the answer or the item or the instructions along with audio for that. We have the Spanish version of audio and written ready to go and we'll get that added in here hopefully before too long.

If you do need the Spanish version, if this is something you decide to use, let me know and we will send you the paper copy of it in the meantime. We have Chinese ready to go, simple Chinese,

Mandarin Chinese, written and audio ready to add in. And if any of you know any other languages you want put in here, translated and we'll put it up here for you. But those are the major ones that

we'll have ready at least by the end of summer.

So there's eight constructs, 34 items. The reading levels are professionals at the high school level, families about the sixth grade level. The student version test out at 4.8. There's some words in

there like accommodations that can artificially inflate the reading level so I'd say the actual reading level once you take out a few large words is a little lower than that. Questions or thoughts so

far? I keep looking at my power button now.

Let's look at some basic psychometric findings. For the last two years, we've done many, many psychometric tests on the collected data that we've had. I just want to give you some highlights. If you

go to the TAGG website, you can download the technical manual which has all in much, much more detail. And we're updating several pieces of that now that we'll upload that one here in a few weeks as

well with the most recent data. But just a quick overview. In turnover liability; basically how well an assessment hangs together. You want it to be a score between .7 and .8 and that's considered

good. That's considered something that we like. Each TAGG version had an overall internal consistency in the subscales ranging from 8.9 to 9.5 so the TAGG's internal reliability is what? Excellent.

Right.

Test retest for liability. Taken now take it X number of weeks again, how close are the scores? They ought to be fairly close together. And what we found was the test retest was .7 and -- well, that's

what we want is .7 or higher. And so 14 weeks after the first TAGG was given we gave it again. We went longer than most of these studies go and we found a large correlation between the first and

second administration, .8 for the professional, .7 for family, .7 for students. So that's good.

Then the big questions. How fair is this assessment? We looked at gender because you don't want to have gender inadvertently impact the assessment. So gender bias especially with employment related

assessments is a big deal. And what we found is no overall differences by gender. However, there was funny, some differences at the construct level. For instance my favorite difference is girls

report they talk more at IEP meetings than boys do. What about differences by disability category? Our typical disability categories we have in special ed is there significant differences depending

upon what somebody's disability is? And what we found is that overall there's no differences by disability category. Once again at the construct level, there were some. What disability category for

instance do you think got lower scores than interacting with others? Yes. And so some of the obvious findings is what we have, but overall the categories didn't significantly differ. Had different

profiles but statistically they weren't that different. Now this is one that just blew our socks off once we realized what the data was saying. As we looked at the impact of SAS by free reduced

lunch, family employment, family education. Once again found no significant differences overall. Free lunch eligibility, no differences. Family employment, no differences. Family education on the

family version we found a little difference by the level of family education. For family members who filled out the assessment which were mostly moms by the way who filled it out and had graduate

level backgrounds or higher, they were pickier. They had lower scores than family members that had just a Bachelor's Degree, a high school degree or no degree. So that was the only different by any

of the SAS measures.

So all the things we would want to see for general for validity it's here. And then because there's three versions, how close are the three versions? And we would want a medium correlation and that is

exactly what we found. So across all three versions there was a medium correlation between the parent and educator, the educator and student, the student and educator, and student and family. You get

the idea. So they're not a perfect match, but they're pretty good a medium correlation.

TAGG and self-determination because the TAGG does contain some self-determination constructs because we know self-determination is highly associated with post-school employment. And when you look at

non-academic behaviors, you would almost have to pull in some of the self-determined behaviors. So the students and parents and educators completed the AIR Self-Determination Assessment and we looked

at the AIR vs. the TAGG or compared it to the TAGG and found a moderate or medium correlation between the AIR and the TAGG which is just what we want. Basically it's saying yes it's paying attention

to self-determination skills, but it's doing other things, too. We wouldn't have wanted a perfect correlation for this because it's not a self-determination assessment. But it is picking up

self-determination measures. Make sense so far?

Then there's a scoring method that modern day assessments use called Item Response Theory and what it does, it looks at the difficulty of items. Well, then it's used for all types of assessment like

the new ASVAB uses item response theory when you take it and when it scored. SAT uses Item Reponse Theory and so does the TAGG. And so that all happens in the background. You don't see it and

fortunately none of us have to do it because I don't think we could do it by hand. But in doing so, it's another bit of validity evidence and as we make important decisions, it actually can weigh

through all of the items based on how difficult the items are to truly tell us what is the student's greatest need, what is the student's greatest strength not just on an average score, what percent

is higher. It does that in terms of how difficult the items happen to be. And so because deciding annual transition goals based on kids' needs is such an important undertaking because that's what

we're going to teach this next year is we really have to use something like IRT to get there.

So it's the advantage of using IRT we can scale different type of items like we have a yes/no answer. Can have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It scores them both equally as well. And it gives us a common metric

that we can use to understand it all and that is, as I said earlier, it weighs items differentially by how difficult it is and at the item level and construct. So what would happen behind the

background as the assessment is completed, the items are converted into a common score and then a difficulty level is added to that. And then it compares within students to determine strengths and

weaknesses and within construct comparison to really identify particular goals for the student to work on based on the needs. So that's what all happens in the background. And what we see then in the

graphs is presented in a Stay 9 graph, Stay 9 bar graph. Stay 9 basically zero to 9 with 5 being smack in the middle. And rather than argue about a particular score, it's presented in terms of a

standard deviation unit. It's just how wide it is. So somebody who does average compared to the norm group, they're at a 5 and so that's what the score is because if somebody has a 4, is that really

that much different than 5? Well, yeah, no it's not. So we just classify them by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to really take advantage of what the Stay 9 has to offer.

So at the Zarrow Center website, one of the things that we've tried really hard to do in using the Zarrow Endowment Funds is to make material there free, make sure it's evidenced based so that

educators can readily use it. And if you haven't been, we've got all kinds of assessments and transition related material, instruction material there. But with the TAGG though because there's so many

costs in keeping it up and ongoing and secure web server and security people and we got to charge for this one. It's not much. It's $3.00 a set and one set includes a professional version, a student

version, and a family version. You can pay with purchase order, credit card, and all the money doesn't come to me, I wish it did. But it goes to the OU Office of Technology Development and they divvy

it up around campus. And we get hopefully enough to pay for keeping the TAGG up and making it available.

Data is safe for seven years. Your profile is safe for seven years. It's kept on OU Secure Cloud servers. So secure they won't even tell me as the Director and the Zarrow Professor where the data's

kept at. They'll just tell me the direction of campus where it's at. And what's nice about it, so you purchase 10 TAGGs, you don't use all of them. You can give two to your teammate. You can transfer

it to someone else to use. And then if you don't like it you can get a refund on it for up to one year.

So there's a website for the TAGG and we have two versions; we have the actual TAGG site where the data is real and we use it and what we're doing with the data. Last week presented this at

[INDISCERNIBLE], that's the group at the technical assistance center for professionals like you who are involved with students who are deaf and hard of hearing. And what they decided in the meeting

-- well so if we use the TAGG then we'll build up a data set just for our unique small population of students and then you can run validity studies just on students who are deaf or hard of hearing or

one or the other. And that's right. And so we'll keep the data in an anonymous way. We will then do future validity studies. As the research comes up with new items we got to plunk them in and then

we have to redo the validity studies to make sure it all fits with that new item in there. So at the actual TAGG website that data is very cherished and the only thing we can get access is just the

anonymous data. No names are ever connected with it. And then if you happen to be a college professor or a researcher and you want to access the TAGG using your teacher prep classes, your school site

classes, or do a research we'll give you access to a demo site where we don't keep the data and the data is really funny data that we never plan to use for anything. But it's the same TAGG.

So what I want to do now is show you the TAGG. We'll go through it, show you how it all works. And then once we're done with that, we'll go through and show how you can use the ME! lessons -- ME!, M-E

exclamation point -- which are lessons for teaching self-awareness and self-advocacy to teach some of the identified TAGG needs. Question, yes.

>> Are you suggesting that we start with TAGG and we follow it through graduation or --

>> Yes.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Oh of course you could. You can use it as often or as little as you like. But we don't really recommend doing it more than once a year. But at most once a year and then kids will ideally use it

every year because they'll use some skills, new needs will pop up, new needs will be prioritized, new annual transition goals will be produced that they can work on for this next year.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Sure. But it's only $3.00. It's really -- after some of the prices I saw people selling things for in the -- over there today and yesterday, $3.00 is just nothing. It's $3.00 per set and a set

includes one professional, one student, and one family. So you've got 10 kids, it'd be $30.00.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Yes, it's used one time. So other questions or thoughts? Yes.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Teachers, what do you think? Would she have trouble with that if she came in and suggested -- I suggest you use the TAGG with my son or daughter. Would that be an issue?

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> That's what I would think.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> One. So I didn't mean to make light of that. But you have to get at least one. And we've had a lot of people buy one and then they come back and buy some more. Or not. It's like with anything. You

have to look at it to make sure it's something that would be right for your students. And if it isn't, then use something else because it's not right for everyone. There's another question I saw

somewhere. Yes.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Right. So in that case it's no different than if you're adding in a claim use program onto your school iPad. Probably the same thing. And some schools don't have all of those hoops you have to jump

through either. Somebody else had a question. Yes.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> And we've had some parents purchase this and they fill out their section and then they email it to their teacher to fill out. So let me, you know, everything shrinks when it goes to large scale

projector. So here's the Zarrow Center website. The easiest way to get here is just Google Zarrow Center, Z-A-R-R-O-W. And there's all sorts of things at the Zarrow Center website. So if you have

trouble going to sleep tonight, just go here and look at it for a while and you'll be so excited you won't go to sleep till tomorrow morning. But here's the TAGG set. Transition assessment and goal

generator. So click on this and then once you click on it, it pops up and looks like this. So there's all sorts of things here. And usually it's spread out more and these are all horizontal, but

because it's made big so you can see it, there's three sections. Learn About the TAGG, Create a TAGG Account, and Log In.

So Learn About the TAGG -- so you click on Learn About the TAGG and it's all kinds of informational things. A TAGG overview which is what I've told you already. There's a TAGG demo video. It's a video

that will actually kind of be what I'll show you here in a little bit. It shows going through the TAGG and some items and how the score profiles are developed. There's a handout with the TAGG

constructs; same handout that you can get on your app for this presentation. Sample TAGG pages where we just took screen shots of various sections of the TAGG and the technical manual. One of my pet

peeves with all of our assessments in our field is that you have to pay a fortune to get the technical manual. If anything, the technical manual ought to be free so you can see how it's made because

sometimes you've got to pay $150, $300, $75 for a technical manual and there's one often used transition assessment. You open it up and actually buy the technical manual. You get in there and it has

nothing at all to do with the assessment that they're selling. But they do have a technical manual for sale. Go figure that one out. At least they have the appearance. But to go here you can download

all of it or by various chapters. And we're updating that right now with the data from last year's validity studies and those will all be updated here probably in a month or so.

That's the TAGG website. So to use the TAGG, you have to go in and you have to create a TAGG account. So to be able to purchase items or to use the TAGG, create an account. It's basically your email

address and a password and you have to agree to the terms and conditions. So you might have your special ed director who might buy 40 copies of the TAGG or 40 TAGG sets. You get 10, another teacher

gets 10 and so forth. Then the special ed director who purchased them or her secretary will have to go and assign you 10 credits and to get those 10 credits you have to be a registered user because

otherwise you won't show up when she clicks on transfer TAGGs to my account. So make sure you create a TAGG account. It's real easy to do. And then once you've got an account, you've been assigned

credits or you bought credits all you have to do is log in. And I hope we get access. Things are moving very slow with internet.

 

Well, that's frustrating. Here we've got log in. So I'm going to log in and don't do like what I did. I have so many passwords. About a month ago I bought a password keeper and then I forget the

password to the password keeper. Came up with this real creative numeric password and a couple weeks later went to open it to get out a password and I couldn't remember what it was. Well, there we

go. So this will take you to -- you'll see some things here that you typically won't see, but I'm going to search for -- these are all demo accounts. A lot of these we created just to test the TAGG

or we've given them out to professors all over the -- actually all over the world now. And so I'm going to search for Bob Stoops whenever I get in. Any of you know who Bob Stoops is? Who's Bob

Stoops? Football coach. Like a lot of high school football coaches, he has kids with an IEP and he's a special ed teacher. So we're going to search for his students which just happens to be a whole

bunch of football players. Well, I don't know what to do Mark. I can't get in. I think we have so many people using, that we can't, it's maxed out the system, is what I think. We actually need a hard

wire connection to make this.

 

Well, let me explain it to you. So you log in -- here we go. So I'm going to go in under account management. I'm going to search for Bob Stoops. And so what you'll see is that everything is assigned

to the teacher. So here's Coach Stoops. I'm going to log in as the coach. And then I'm the coach now and here are all of my students who happen to be a lot of [INDISCERNIBLE] football players. I've

no idea if they had IEPs or not. And so these haven't been completed. These have been completed. He sure has a big case load. So let's go in and look at Sanjay Pareen's made up TAGG result profile.

So what you see when you look at the result profile for this particular student, as you scroll down you can see and these you can just copy and paste in the areas of greatest strength as identified

by the student, the family and professional, areas of relative strength, areas of greatest need, and areas of relative need. Then there is a written summary of performance statement that you can copy

all of that or part of it and drop into your place in your IEP where you put summary of transition assessments. And then hold onto your socks. Here is an annual transition goal that you can copy and

paste and put directly into the IEP. And once you drop it into the IEP then you can tweak with the criterion, you can change the behavior around a bit, but it's written the way an annual measurable

transition goal should be written. And then like you where Oklahoma's not a common core state but it's matched to the common core standards as well.

And so we based on the family and professional areas of interacting with others in need. So that's the major -- I think the guts of what we use as teachers and then the other part that the result

profile provides and this is the combined result. So here's the construct for disability awareness. The student rated it at the construct core 7, the parent a 6, the professional a 4 and down below

it gives the word to describe what that particular Stay 9 score is. And as soon as our web guy gets to it, we're also going to put down here what the actual percentile scores as well. It's fairly

easy to convert from a Stay 9 to a percentile. If don't know, go see your school psychologist. He or she will show you how to do it. But that's on the schedule to get added to -- below here would be

the actual percentile line. And so you can see -- and these are all just made up data, but just to fill it out.

So that's the summary by constructs and then there's a combined overall score that's not the average of all of the above, but it looks at the difficulty of each item, how the student was scored, and

then scores them all together again to come up with that combined overall score. So that's what the results profile happens to be. So we just disability awareness is a need so we copy, drop it into

the IEP, same way with the strengths and we have recommended annual transition goals that you might want to use or you may not want to use. That's your choice. Or you can copy it in. You have the

shell of what a good goal ought to look like and then you can change it as needed. Results profile -- questions, thoughts? Yes.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> The new atom.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> They're written using the requirements that InStack said that we should have in our annual transition goals. So that's the biggest national transition standard there probably is. Maybe you want

more than that, but it has the criterion, it has the behavior, it's measurable. And maybe you want a different one. So at least it's a place to start. It gives you some ideas that then you can copy,

paste, and tweak as needed. Not ever meant to be the final thing.

So let's go take an assessment. So K. J. Young is not complete. So you open up K. J. Young and there's the professional version, student version, family. As I parent, I buy it, I email it to my

teacher to complete the student version and the family version. So let's open up the professional version because that's the most complex of the three and we'll show you what that looks like. So the

professional version has the construct written out, the items below the construct, and then for each set of instructions and each item it gives you an audio button you can play.

>> Strengths and limitations. Students express personal areas of mastery and limited ability.

>> Thanks you Amber. And so what we want to do and this is kind of on the long term want list, as it's read we want the words to be highlighted. And so we're eventually going to get that added in, but

we want it to be working first. Or you can play an ASL video off it and we'll see how long this takes to get uploaded. Usually it's not anywhere near the struggle. Here it goes. Let's launch a longer

one. It froze is what happened. But it's the audio and then the video and it does this whole strength and limitation description.

 

So rule #1, make sure you have a good enough internet connection. So anyway, you guys see what that looks like. And so let's look at some of the items. So the items are for the professional version,

they're on a 1 to 5 scale, organized by those eight construct areas, 34 items all together. So the student told someone what he or she does well. The student told someone what he or she has trouble

doing. The student expressed accurate information about his or her academic strengths. The student identified situations when assistance was needed. So I rate each one of those as the professional

based on my understanding of the student. Next is disability awareness. The student uses the least stigmatizing disability label that results in getting the most support. The student expressed the

type of supports and accommodations needed for his or her disability. The student views the disability as only one aspect of his or her life. In all of these behaviors, I'd say 32 of the 34 actually

were identified in the research literature as somehow being connected to employment and/or further education. The student explained to others that he or she receives special education services.

Persistence. The student views not giving up in school is important. The student keeps working until he or she accomplishes a goal. The student utilizes different strategies to continue to stay on

task. The student keeps working to achieve a goal even when it becomes hard. The student learns from mistakes and does better next time.

Interacting with others. The student's success when he participates in small groups, participates in community organizations such as sports clubs, organized social groups, successfully interacts with

teachers, family, and other adults. Goal setting and attainment. The student sets goals that matches his or her strengths and interest while taking into consideration what the family or community

wants him or her to do. The student creates short term goals to attain the long term goals. The student uses plans he or she develops to attain a goal. The student adjusts plans to attain goals if

they do not work. The student moves on to the next goal after attaining a goal. The student has attained at least one transition goal. And for those of you who were here this morning, how many

transition goals do you have to attain to actually make a difference in the post-school outcomes? One. So you see where that question came from.

Employment. The student expresses wanting a job. The student expresses wanting a job that matches his or her career interest. The student has had unpaid jobs such as working for a family member. The

student has had a paid job. Student involvement in the IEP. The student told the IEP team his or her post-school goals. The student discussed his or her present level of performance at the IEP

meeting. The student explained how his or her course of study assists in achieving post-school goals at the IEP meeting. And the student lead his or her own IEP meeting. Support community. Three more

questions to go. The student distinguishes between individuals who are positive sources of support from those who are not. The student accepts help from support people when offered. The student only

uses support people when needed, not to get out of doing things. And the student seeks assistance from community agencies. So that's all there is.

So we're going to submit it. If I missed any it will pop up and tell me and then on the professional version, it asked a set of questions for basic demographic information about the student. And when

you get this, please fill it out. It's all kept anonymously. But we'll use that information for future validity studies. Oop, I missed a question. Someone put a 4 here. Get my cursor going. Three for

that one. Continue. And then up should pop the demographic variables. And then once we're done with this, we'll go look at the student version. All the items are parallel. It's just the language is

changed a bit. Student version is at the easiest reading level of all and it's first person -- I. The family version is my child.

 

What do you think of that word? Is that the best way to word it -- is it my child or should it be my -- we didn't know what to put there. Is it my student, my child, my young adult --

>> Dependent.

>> My adult child. I don't -- any parents here? What do you think that should be?

>> Young adult. Young adults.

>> Young adult?

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Yeah, my dependent. Maybe that's a way to do it. But right now it says my child because amongst our team we couldn't agree on what it ought to be. The student -- my student. Well, I can't get to

it. While the internet is trying to do its thing, what do you think so far? Make sense? Questions? Thoughts? Yes, back in the back.

>> Where we work at, we have a school [INDISCERNIBLE] and our parents aren't very involved in this process.

>> Well, that's great.

>> Yeah. Does the parent portion have to be filled out in order to be able to use this?

>> No. What you'll do and I will never get back there so I'll just explain it to you what it does. So when you're selecting that big menu, the student, family or professional version where you email

it, you can just skip user. Select skip user and then just move right on and you can do that now or you can go back and do that later. And now the page has shut down. Well, I'm glad it showed you the

profile. So you get the profile. It shows you what the results are like, what the items are like. Somebody else had a question, too. Yes.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Yes. And it uses -- we submitted a research proposal last year and we just got the sign language videos done. And we didn't do it, PetNet did this for us. And so when the critiques came -- they

never said anything about the research design. They were just worried about the ASL videos and what accent did it have. Did it have a southern accent, New England accent? I don't know. So watch it

and tell me if you think they're appropriate or not. And according to PetNet, it's the most appropriate version they have to make it work. And they went through an elaborate translation process where

somebody signed it, then somebody else anonymously interpreted it, and then they compared the interpretation back to the original language. And they went back and redid several of the tapes because

of that. Same thing with the Spanish version that we have available and the Chinese, by the way.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Right now we have Spanish done. It's in written and audio form. We have simple Chinese or Mandarin done in written and audio form. And we also have Russian done. Russian in written or audio. Audio

Russian isn't done yet. But I'm going to verify that translation because I don't think I'd give it out yet. So we have Chinese and Spanish. If you need either one of those it's just written right

now. We haven't got it uploaded to the software. But if you need either one of those, let me know. And we will send it to you. So, yes.

>> This program seems like a dream come true for our [INDISCERNIBLE] and we have a transition coordinator who's just run himself ragged just filling out papers and doing everything so this would do it

all for her. But I noticed when you pulled up that goal for us as special education teachers who have the progress longer than those goals, that one that was up there, I wasn't sure how I would be

able to progress forward. It was like four out of six [INDISCERNIBLE] of community.

>> Then don't use it. Pick another one.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> I would think so. But, you know, that depends upon different things for different people. And so just go in and if you'd rather see percentages, go in and add percentages to it. Just take out 4 of

6 and put in 85% for three consecutive trials.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Well, we've had panels of teachers look at it and they said yes. But you put a panel of teachers together coming up with how to teach something. Another panel of teachers would have other ideas.

And so but that's the way it ought to be. And so if it's not quite what you want then at least you've got the essence of it done. Copy it in and then change it as needed. Does that make sense? Okay.

So, yes.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Pie chart of interest. Oh that was in a different lesson package called Student Directed Transition Planning. And you can get that at the Zarrow Center website. That's the one that actually -- at

the Zarrow Center website, we have all kinds of transition education materials available and I'll, maybe five minutes from now, will show up and I can go show it to you. But the Student Directed

Transition Planning lessons are there and the one I want to show you now is really the most popular set of materials at the Zarrow Center website. And it's just downloaded thousands of times since we

got it going. It's called ME!, it's Lessons for Teaching Self-Awareness and Self-Advocacy. Have any of you used this yet? The TAGG -- you've used this?

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Oh, great, great. What the ME! does is it -- well let me back up; is the TAGG will identify disability awareness needs. It will identify student involvement in the IEP needs and some others,

knowing my strengths and limitations. And those can all be taught using the ME! lessons. And so the purpose of ME! is to teach kids to become self-aware adults who advocate for their employment and

education needs. And then ME! facilitates teaching of these particular skills. And it gives a nice organized way that kids can learn this information and then take it into their IEP meeting to

practice it out. So it also is a way to encourage involvement in the IEP meeting. So when a TAGG identifies disability awareness, strengths and limitations, and student involvement as well as goal

setting and attainment, ME! can help teach those skills. It's free, it's evidence-based lesson package that you can use. Download it at the Zarrow Center website. Or the easiest way to get there

might be just to Google ME! lessons and you can get there.

We had a grant from the Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Council to develop this. It took us three years to develop it and we first came up with the draft scope and sequence and then special ed

teachers gave feedback on it. We revised the scope and sequence, got some more focus group feedback on it. We developed a few lessons. Guess what happened then? Teachers gave feedback on the draft

lessons. We revised the lessons and then developed more lessons and guess what? Teachers gave us some more feedback on the developed lessons. We revised the lessons, then once we had them done we

started field testing them. Some worked, some didn't. We revised and got feedback from the kids, from the students, revised the lessons again. And the once it was all done we started doing some

studies. We did one, another group in North Carolina did another one, and they both now have been submitted for publication. So like in Oklahoma, the same with us, it's aligned to the Oklahoma

standards, common core standards for language, writing, speaking, and listening. And if you end up aligning it to your own Pennsylvania standards, send them to us and we'll get them up on the

website.

So there's 10 units and it's designed to be taught in sequential order starting with 1 going all the way through 10. And here are the 10 units. Getting Started, Learning About Special Ed,

Understanding My IEP, Understanding My Rights and My Duties, Responsibilities, Improving My Communication Skills, Increasing my Self-Awareness, Advocating for My Needs in High School as well as After

High School, Developing My Resources, and then Building My Progress Portfolio. And in my portfolio are all the things I've learned through this process. So spread across the 10 units there's 23

lessons. Like for instance, here's unit 2, Learning About Special Ed which, by the way, I think has turned out to be my favorite lessons because it's amazing the misconceptions our students have

about what Special Education is. I knew that was always there, but I didn't realize those misconceptions were quite as deep as they are. So learning about the history of disability is where it

begins. Just what it is -- what has it been like across time. Learning about Special Education, what it is, and then how and why I got here. How did I get into Special Education. Do you remember

taking those tests when you were in grade school? Yeah, I remember taking those. So it's the kids create their own special ed history. In doing so clears up many, many, many misperceptions. And they

create -- don't you like that -- and they create my history -- my special education history. And so it's designed for group instruction and it's been taught in a number of places. Resource

[INDISCERNIBLE] and studies transition education classes, studies skills classes. Time to teach -- lessons will take 45 to 60 minutes so 18 to 23 hours all together unless you want to elaborate and

go into more detail with some of them and all the lessons include information and suggestions of how you can elaborate and to go into more detail. I'm not going to get into the website because

obviously we can't get into it. So but here is what it looks like when you download it. So it's ME! lessons. You can read about it, download it all in one big package. That becomes kind of unwieldy

in some ways. But then you can download each unit and the pieces of the unit. It includes cryptic lesson packages, pre/post test, the handouts you need, links to videos, all sorts of things.

So pre/post assessment; kids will do the ME! scale at the beginning where it's all about me and the You scale which is what do you think of me. And so parents will fill it out, they'll have teachers,

they'll have best friends fill it out. There are scripted lessons and modified lessons. A teacher in North Carolina provided the modified lessons by the way. Then there's all the worksheets and

materials that you would need, unit exams, that you can use to gauge progress, instant videos. Oftentimes there's PowerPoint files you download. And then most recently, one of our students did a

series of what he called bell ringer activities. This was his Master's project where he went through and wrote several -- he never had time to teach all the lessons at once, but he could squeeze a

few minutes at the beginning of each class. So he created a whole series of bell ringer activities. They're quick 10 minute activities, a couple a little longer, most a little less that he would have

students do right at the beginning of class. So unit 9 and 10 bell ringers -- and so you download it. It gives you something you show on your PowerPoint that kind of matches the content and then they

either practice it or they run a little more content for the different bell ringer activities. And he's finding -- we have no data to back this up, but he's finding in his own teaching work that the

bell ringers do a pretty good job of teaching the content of the lessons. But if you want to and it's all open source, you can go in and tweak the lessons, tweak the bell ringer activities, add new

ones if you want to. Just if you make it better send it back to us so we can stick it back on the website.

 

Yes, question.

>> Is there a built in reality check anywhere [INDISCERNIBLE].

>> Never happens in Oklahoma so we just don't worry about it.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Now this one doesn't look at goal setting or goal attainment. This is just disability awareness and self-advocacy. There are some others though that come close to that. This morning we talked about

the goal attainment strategy and one of the things that that does is kids have to start work on attaining their goals. And after they work on it and they work on it if they can't attain it, then they

have to start adjusting things. So the adjusting component is literally forced upon them. And so they have to start changing pieces of their goal maybe to be able to attain it. So that would be --

this isn't my day for presentation. Trying to download it, now my --

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Oh, okay. Thank you for your prompts. Now it's downloading. So what it is, it's a PowerPoint presentation with several slides for unit 9 and 10 bell ringers. So let me go on to the end products. So

when it's all over, students will end up with a portfolio and in it they put all the stuff they've learned about themselves. It's my special education history, it's my ME! scales, my You scales and

they do an understanding disability project where they go in to understand their particular type of disability. So all the products come together, then it creates a script and the script is presented

as if it's a student directed summary of performance. And it has language in it that it's all first person and students will take that into their IEP meeting and they'll have content to help present

their summary of performance information about what they learned about themselves. So that section where you talk about disability and strengths and needs. So kids got that information that instead

of you talking about it or just reading what's on the IEP, kids can then give their version of it. You might have to write something different. Well, at least we can move on.

So it's my special ed history, my summary of performance that talks about my disability is, my greatest strength is, my transition goal happens to be. Kids create the ME! book which is all about them.

So units have individual lessons, understanding my IEP, getting to know my IEP, still getting to know my IEP unit 4, learning about my rights and responsibility in high school, after high school, and

where do I go from here. And then there's, for instance, for that one there's some materials about accommodations. What are the variety of accommodations I can have? Which ones work for me? Same way

with modifications, what can they ask for? Here you might want to add in information unique to your district section on improving communication skills, knowing what to share and who I share it with,

how to communicate effectively. Do I tell everybody about my disability or am I select with it? Do I have to give information about my disability if I apply for job? What if a teacher asks me about

my disability? Then students will do their self-awareness project. They'll present the self-awareness to class. It's kind of a cool PowerPoint. You might already have something like this. It's a

famous people PowerPoint. And who are famous people who have had disabilities? Kids will learn about their strengths and limits, advocating for my needs in high school, after high school. Developing

my resources and finally, going through my summary of performance portfolio and pulling it all together. We know there's been two studies done on the ME! so far; one we did [INDISCERNIBLE] did that

for a dissertation, did it with a small group of people and kids have big increases in their knowledge measures. And it's interesting. She also interviewed the parents and the parents said, you know,

I'm really glad Johnny had a chance to learn this because I didn't really know what to tell him about his or her disability. I don't know all that language. That's what you know, teacher, so I'm glad

you taught him and not me because that's probably why I haven't because I didn't know what to say. Another study was done in North Carolina, multiple based line design.

Here's some voices from Oklahoma. "Teacher, are you comfortable talking about disabilities," Pedro said. "If you don't know about something you can't control it." Teacher, "How to parents' guardians

feel about self-awareness and disability awareness?" Letha the grandmother said, "I hope he's happy. I'd like to see him have a job that he's good at and allows him to support himself. This helps and

I'm glad he does." Teacher, "How do you discuss disability without upsetting students and/or breaking confidentiality?" "Okay, this sounds weird," says the student, "but I kind of liked looking at my

IEP. I liked it because I did not know what was on that thing. At first I thought I would hate, but it turned out that I liked what we did. If you understand your disability and how you got it, then

you don't feel so bad. And if you understand it, when people start judging me because of things like reading or spelling, I can tell them I can explain to them what's going on with me." How do you

get necessary support from educators and parents, before the ME! lessons, after the ME! lessons. "You know," a student said, "I don't know. I think it would upset me. It would me feel really stupid.

I would get over it. I mean I would have to -- it's like I could just hide my disability. After the lessons, I feel like now I really know what learning disabilities mean. It doesn't mean something's

wrong with me. I just have trouble with XYZ." So the ME! lesson and the TAGG without internet connection assessment. So what do you think? [APPLAUSE] Thank you.

Before we leave, I want to show you a few things at the Zarrow Center website just so you see other things that are available to you. So at the Zarrow Center website we have self-determination

assessments. There's two major self-determination assessments; one is the AIR self-determination assessment. The other is the ARC self-determination assessment. You can download both of those here

along with the instructional manuals. The AIR has student/parent professional version. The ARC just has the student version. We have some transition resources for kids with more significant

especially intellectual disabilities.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

>> Well, I am. I'm waiting for it to open. We've got some other things that we want to -- we've been dealing with some copyright issues. When we get those settled, we'll put some other materials up

here later on. We had a conversation with them last week and I think we got all the bugs worked out. And so we'll put those up there.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Yes, yes. Do they? Not necessarily entitlement and eligibility. But there are lessons about who do I tell my disability to? When do I tell it? How do I tell about my disability to a rehab

counselor, to a disability service provider at a college or university? So that is covered. And then the other lesson package, the student directed transition planning lesson package, it actually

goes into several more what's called in the lesson packages as just connection points. Who do I need to make connections with in the non-public school world? So it goes into more depth. Yes.

Well, we're not getting into that one. I'm sorry. But what's there, the most popular -- I think it might be the only thing we have there right now. It's the personal preference indicators. Child

version, adult version, and an employment personal preference indicators. It's designed to have a conversation with a parent primarily to get information about their child. It's designed for those

kids who just don't have a voice and they can't speak for themselves. And it's the only assessment I know where you can actually come up with positive information about kids. Because if you do the

typical transition assessment for some of these students, their scores will end up close to zero and that doesn't tell us anything. We already know that. But it will look at -- how do you know what

music they like? How do you know if they're hungry? How do you know those types of preference type questions? So go look at that when you have a better internet connection.

There's elementary materials. We just submitted for publication three packages, elementary self-determination packages to the Council for Exceptional Children that hopefully they'll publish here

before too long, about kids getting involved in their IEP meetings, about literary school, one for student directed behavior support plans, and one to look at goal attainment in reading and math

activities.

 

So that's my dog, Wally. So 93 pound Labradoodle. Big dog. He went to the vet a couple days ago. The wife took him to the vet and big dog, went to the vet's office. And as a little puppy he ate about

everything there was to eat. Went there several times to have his stomach emptied. And he doesn't like going to the vet. This big dog -- my little wife, my big dog, she was sitting on the bench. The

dog climbed up behind her and just cowered. Funniest picture she took. They came in and said now that's a photo minute. Took a picture and put it on her Facebook. But anyway, that distracted.

So any other final thoughts or questions? Yes.

>> [INDISCERNIBLE]

>> Yes. Yes it does. That's the whole point of it. It gets at it slowly through strengths and needs at first, but then it eventually gets right to that particular disability that the child has. Not

that we're going to say in class oh he has emotional behavior problems. He does. She has is it brain injury? I can't remember. She has -- he never does that. But it's all done based upon material

that students get and if students want to share it to the class they can. But that's never a required part of it.

Well, we would have filled the whole hour up if we had internet access, but we don't. So I encourage you to go here and look at it. So thanks everybody.