Vocational Assessments in the IEP: Figuring Out What Comes After High School.

“She likes to braid hair.” That was the entire transition plan in a teenager’s IEP. I wish I were exaggerating. I’m not. Several years ago, I was the Educational Surrogate for a teen. When I opened her IEP and read the transition section, that one sentence was all that was there.

And the worst part? She had already been transition age for two years. Not surprisingly, she had never received a vocational assessment as part of her IEP process.

Unfortunately, stories like this are more common than they should be. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 18% of adults with disabilities were employed in recent years. That number should concern all of us.

Early in my advocacy career, most of my clients were teens navigating the transition years of their IEPs. What I saw over and over again were students approaching adulthood with very little real career exploration, very little planning, and very little information about their strengths and interests.

That’s exactly where vocational assessments are supposed to help. Many transition teams use vocational assessments for individuals with disabilities to better understand a student’s strengths, interests, and work preferences before they leave high school. A vocational assessment is simply a structured way to gather information about a student’s interests, strengths, work habits, and support needs as they prepare for life after high school.

See: Life After IEPs: An 8-Step Plan to Prepare Your Child for Adulthood

Vocational Planning

Thankfully, this is one area of IEPs where I have seen improvement in the 16 years that I’ve been an IEP advocate. Many service providers are offering more and different opportunities for students, and that is trickling down into the IEP process in the schools.

Another positive change I have seen over the past decade is the concepts of self-determination and person-centered planning becoming more popular and consistent. If your child is going to stay in school for a 13th and 14th year on their IEP, then chances are vocational training of some kind will be a part of that.

How to Request a Vocational Assessment

If your child needs a vocational assessment, the process is similar to any other IEP evaluation request. Put your evaluation request in writing, or wait for your child’s re-evaluation period and request it then. As an experience IEP Advocate, I recommend getting two.

The first one when the child enters transition at age 14/16, and the second one when they are getting ready to exit high school. In many states, the IEP transition period is from age 14-22 or 26, and a child’s skills and abilities can change tremendously in that amount of time. Admittedly, getting a IEP re-evaluation at ages 18-21 requires more advocacy.

I have a whole separate post on how to request IEP evaluations.

You want to ask your team who will be conducting the evaluation, and what their qualifications are. This may require that a separate agency is brought in to do this, and be a part of the IEP team. IDEA mentions this as a part of IEP transition.

Why does a student need a vocational assessment?

A vocational assessment is crucial for students, especially those with disabilities, as it helps guide them toward meaningful and realistic career paths. Here’s why a vocational assessment is so important:

Identifying Strengths and Interests

• Understanding Abilities: Vocational assessments help students discover their strengths, talents, and skills, which are key factors in finding a job they will enjoy and excel at.
• Exploring Interests: These assessments reveal what the student is passionate about, allowing them to pursue careers that align with their interests, leading to greater job satisfaction and motivation.

Setting Realistic Career Goals

• Matching Skills to Jobs: The assessment identifies jobs that match the student’s abilities, helping them set achievable career goals. This ensures they pursue a path that is both realistic and fulfilling.
• Planning for the Future: With a clear understanding of their vocational potential, students can set short- and long-term career goals and develop a roadmap to reach them.

Personalized Education and Training Plans

• Tailoring IEP Goals: The results from vocational assessments are used to create or adjust the student’s IEP to include career-related goals and activities that prepare them for the workforce.
• Identifying Training Needs: If a student requires specific skills or training to reach their career goals, the assessment can pinpoint these areas, allowing for targeted educational and vocational training.

Facilitating Smooth Transitions

• From School to Work: For students nearing the end of their school years, vocational assessments play a critical role in planning the transition from school to employment or further education.
• Independence and Self-Sufficiency: The assessment helps students gain the skills and confidence needed to enter the workforce, fostering greater independence and self-sufficiency as they move into adulthood.

Improving Employment Outcomes

• Increasing Job Success: By aligning a student’s career path with their strengths and interests, vocational assessments increase the likelihood of finding and keeping a job that they are capable of performing well.
• Reducing Job Mismatches: The assessment helps avoid placing students in jobs that are a poor fit for their abilities or interests, reducing the chances of job dissatisfaction or failure.

Providing Insight for Support Services

• Customized Support: The results of a vocational assessment can highlight areas where a student might need additional support, whether that’s through accommodations, assistive technology, or job coaching.
• Advocacy and Resources: Vocational assessments provide concrete data that can be used to advocate for necessary resources and services that help the student succeed in their chosen career.

Empowering Students and Families

• Informed Decision-Making: With clear insights into potential career paths, students and their families can make informed decisions about education, training, and employment.
• Building Confidence: Knowing what they are good at and where they can succeed gives students the confidence to pursue their goals and advocate for themselves in the workplace.

The right student vocational assessment ensures that their education and career planning are aligned with their abilities, interests, and future aspirations.

What does IDEA say about vocational assessments?

IDEA doesn’t say that every student must receive a vocational assessment. But it does say something very important: transition planning must be based on the student’s strengths, preferences, and interests.

In other words, schools aren’t supposed to guess what your child might want to do after high school. Transition planning is supposed to be individualized and based on real information about the student.

For many students, a vocational assessment is one of the best ways to gather that information. A vocational assessment for students with disabilities can include interest inventories, job sampling, work readiness checklists, and observations in real work environments.

Free Vocational Assessments for Disabled Students

there are a few free vocational assessments and career tools that can be useful for students with disabilities, especially when you’re just trying to start the conversation about interests and strengths. Some are designed specifically for transition-age students, while others are general career exploration tools that work well with IEP teams.

Here are some of the better free options.

O*NET Interest Profiler

This is one of the most widely used free career tools in the U.S.

The O*NET Interest Profiler asks students questions about activities they enjoy and then connects those interests to possible careers. It’s simple and works well for middle school and high school students beginning transition planning.

My Next Move

This site uses the same interest profiler but presents results in a very student-friendly way. The My Next Move tool lets students explore careers based on interests, browse different job categories, and learn what education or training those careers require.

CareerOneStop Tools

Another Department of Labor resource is CareerOneStop. They offer several free career exploration assessments and work value quizzes that can help students start identifying potential career directions.

Transition-focused Assessments Used by Schools

Some of the commonly used transition tools (like the Transition Planning Inventory or Enderle-Severson Transition Rating Scale) are not free, but they’re often already available within school districts. If your child hasn’t had a vocational assessment, it’s reasonable to ask the IEP team whether they can administer one of the tools the district already uses.

Important note for parents: Online tools are great for career exploration, but they’re not the same as a functional vocational evaluation, where a student is observed completing tasks in real or simulated work environments. Those usually need to be arranged by the school or a vocational professional.

For many students, the best transition planning includes both:

• interest inventories (like the free tools above), and
• hands-on vocational assessments or job experiences.

Examples of IEP Vocational Assessments

There are lots of functional vocational evaluation options available. Think about what your student needs, and make sure that their specific special education vocational assessment hits all those target areas.

One tool sometimes used by transition teams is the Jacobs Prevocational Assessment, which evaluates work behaviors like following directions, staying on task, and interacting with supervisors.

Here are three vocational assessment tools schools commonly use in transition planning that you can ask about in an IEP meeting:

Transition Planning Inventory (TPI): The Transition Planning Inventory looks at areas like employment interests, independent living skills, and community participation. It gathers input from the student, family, and school staff to help build transition goals and identify needed supports.

Enderle-Severson Transition Rating Scale (ESTR): The Enderle-Severson Transition Rating Scale helps teams measure a student’s readiness for adult life in areas like employment, daily living, recreation, and community participation. Schools often use it to track progress during the transition years.

Reading-Free Vocational Interest Inventory (RFVII): The Reading-Free Vocational Interest Inventory is useful for students who struggle with reading. It uses pictures to help students identify work environments and tasks they prefer, which can help guide job exploration and training opportunities.

These are not the only tools available, but they are among the more commonly used assessments in school-based transition planning. If your child is approaching the transition years and the IEP team has not discussed career exploration or assessments yet, it is reasonable to ask what vocational assessments the district uses and whether one would help guide planning.

Functional Assessments

• Transition Planning Inventory (TPI): This assessment evaluates a student’s readiness for adult life, including employment, education, and independent living skills, by looking at their functional abilities and needs.
• Enderle-Severson Transition Rating Scale (ESTR): The ESTR assesses a student’s skills in areas critical to employment, such as self-care, social skills, and community involvement, helping to identify support needs for transition planning.

Situational Assessments

• On-the-Job Evaluations: These assessments place students in real or simulated work environments to observe their performance, work habits, and interaction with coworkers. It provides direct insight into a student’s ability to perform specific job tasks.
• Job Shadowing: While not a formal assessment, job shadowing gives students the chance to observe professionals in different careers, helping them assess their own interest and aptitude for those roles.

Adaptive Behavior Assessments

• Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (Vineland-3): This tool assesses how well students adapt to everyday life activities, which is crucial for understanding what types of jobs they might be able to perform.
• Scales of Independent Behavior-Revised (SIB-R): This assessment looks at a student’s functional independence across various life areas, including work, to determine appropriate career paths and supports needed.

I’m also asked about free vocational assessments for students with disabilities, and while some formal tools require trained professionals, there are also free interest inventories and career exploration tools available online that can help start the conversation.

These vocational assessments can provide valuable insights for IEP teams, parents, and the students themselves as they plan for life after high school. Each tool serves a different purpose, and using a combination of assessments often gives the most comprehensive view of a student’s vocational potential.

Levels of Vocational Assessments

Many state and professional agencies have divided their vocational assessment process into three levels. In the world of special education acronyms, to my knowledge, no one calls it a VA.

But, I have often heard it referred to as a “voc assessment” or just “voc.” (rhymes with woke) Just FYI in case you hear it.

Level 1 Vocational Assessment: The initial process designed to arrive at a decision for vocational planning. This approach may consist of interviews, functional assessment, limited standardized testing, collecting and analyzing background information. It is used to assess one or two specific skills related to a specific vocational option.

A Level 1 screening may include: a re-evaluation of existing data, an informal interview with the student to determine his or her interest in vocational education and functional skill sets, an informal conference with the teacher to gather information about a student’s interests, abilities, and adaptive behaviors (functional skills), an informal conference with parents to determine the post-secondary expectations for their son or daughter and their perceptions of the student’s skill set, and observations of student behavior and academic performance.

Level 2 Vocational Assessment: A process to further investigate vocationally relevant information. It may include additional interviewing, additional vocational counseling, additional standardized testing, transferable skills analysis, and/or job matching. Adaptive transferable skills are usually not an issue. Vocational options are not yet known.

A Level 2 assessment may include: aptitude, achievement, and interest inventories, work readiness assessment of job-seeking and job-keeping skills, work-related behavior inventories, learning style inventories, and a functional living skills assessment that indicates a student’s preparedness to live and work independently.

Level 3 Vocational Assessment: Level 3 is a comprehensive vocational process when more in-depth information is needed beyond Levels 1 and 2 that systematically uses actual work placements to assist an individual’s vocational development and career decision making. The process can use work samples, standardized tests, situational assessments, behavioral observation, community-based assessment, transferable skill analysis, job matching, and background analysis.

A Level 3 assessment may include formal assessment instruments that provide detailed instructions for administration and scoring, Situational assessment to observe and evaluate a student’s work-related behaviors in a controlled or semi-controlled work environment, Work samples/simulated job stations to simulate specific jobs.

What is important to note is that these 3 levels are typically considered to build on each other and are not mutually exclusive. It’s also worth noting that while many agencies and schools have defined levels and processes for determining post-secondary needs, none of these is “law” or statute.

Some IEP teams get into a rut with “this is how we do post-secondary transition with IEP students” and that procedure may not be what your child needs. Your child may need components of all 3 levels. These are only provided as a guideline.

Some students may not need any level of formal assessment service beyond collecting relevant information portfolio style. Others may need one, two, or all three services to further their self-awareness and enhance the career development process. Transition assessment data provide secondary educators with valid information to update IEPs and compile an SOP for each student as the student exits school.

Self Determination Boosters Success

Solid vocation and transition planning is essential. I can’t say this enough. I worked as a vocational instructor and too often I saw students unsuccessful in vocational programs that they had not chosen. Their choices were directed at them, not self-determination.

For example, it’s a common ‘thing’ to direct students who struggle with social skills to work with animals, ergo, in the veterinary field. Well, guess what? None of the animals goes to the vet by themselves. They all come with an owner attached to the leash. As a result, these students are often unsuccessful, because a veterinary practice actually requires a high level of people skills.

It’s essentially a customer service position. As a result, the students wasted time taking a program that was going to be of no value to them in the future because they could not keep a job. And, the student’s confidence and psyche take a hit because everyone told them that this is what they “should” do, and they didn’t want to make waves and speak up and disappoint the adults around them.

Proper exposure to all aspects of a career and a solid vocational assessment would have prevented these mistakes.

Students with IEPs often haven’t had the same exposure to career exploration that many of their peers receive. Between academic struggles, therapy schedules, and just trying to get through school, opportunities to explore different career paths can sometimes fall by the wayside.

Historically, the process wasn’t always much better. For many years, students with disabilities were often passive participants in their own transition planning. Decisions about their futures were made for them rather than with them. Not surprisingly, this meant that many adults with disabilities ended up in jobs that weren’t a good fit for their interests, strengths, or goals.

Even today, too many students leave high school unsure of what they’re good at, what they enjoy, or what kinds of careers might work for them.

That’s where thoughtful career planning and vocational assessments come in. When done well, they help students explore different possibilities, learn to advocate for themselves, connect their education to real-world goals, and gather the information they need to make informed decisions about their future.