Evaluating School-Based Vocational Programs and Transition Readiness Among High School Students With Disabilities in Texas

Transition planning for students with disabilities is a critical component of secondary education, as many continue to face barriers to social inclusion. This study evaluated the effectiveness of school-based vocational programs in enhancing transition readiness among high school students with disabilities in Texas. A quantitative descriptive design was employed using secondary data from the Texas Education Agency’s State Performance Plan Indicator 14 (SPPI-14), Category B. Data were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics using descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-tests to identify variations in helpful high-school experiences across disability categories. Across disability types, helpful high-school experiences ranged from academic classes (67.1%) to paid work experiences (87.4%), indicating that students benefited more from experiential, hands-on learning opportunities than from classroom instruction alone.