Education: Transition

Education

Despite competing hegemonies regarding education for the Deaf, only 30 percent of deaf students complete high school (22 percent receive a formal high school diploma, and the remaining 7 percent receive some form of completion certification). For nearly all of the past decade, the status quo for deaf students in education, especially where transition is concerned, has been low reading levels, low achievement scores, and low graduation rates. Of those students who do graduate, little is known regarding the percentage who end up on one of four different tracks: higher education, employment, vocational training, or none. The remainder of this entry discusses potential issues encountered by deaf students in two of these tracks within transition.

Transition to Higher Education

More deaf people are attending institutions of higher education than ever. This is due to a host of legislation designed to help individuals with disabilities access previously inaccessible realms. Prior to the ADA, it was generally understood that a college-bound deaf individual would likely attend Gallaudet University, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, or California State University at Northridge (CSUN). NTID and CSUN, however, are unlike Gallaudet University in that they house a population of deaf students among a significantly larger body of hearing students. In essence, it is much like the mainstreaming of deaf students in public schools on a larger scale. Gallaudet University offers a majority of classes via direct instruction in American Sign Language (ASL), with a university culture specifically geared toward the bilingual (or emerging bilingual) deaf student.

This is not to say that transition is easier at a university like Gallaudet than at any other university a deaf individual might attend. For many first-year students at Gallaudet, there are psychosocial issues to contend with in addition to issues related to transition. Deaf students arrive at the university level from a variety of backgrounds, including

• Identifying as culturally Deaf, using ASL as a native language
• Identifying as hard of hearing and oral deaf
• Identifying as hard of hearing and using a sign system such as SEE, PSE, or MCE
• Identifying as Deaf with a cochlear implant (CI) and using one or more combinations of the above languages or communication systems
• Identifying as Deaf with a disability (Deaf-Blind, for example)

Many students arrive at postsecondary settings without a robust identity, which is common at this stage for deaf individuals. With so many communication modalities and identities that historically clash, assimilation into the college experience can be daunting for many.

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