This question is specific to Transition services for students reaching transition age (14 or 9th grade or, depending on your state, could be 16 years old or some other variation).
The IDEA's entire mission statement inserted by Congress is so that our identified students work towards Continuing Education, Independent Living and Economic Viability. This is why we fund special education and the ultimate purpose and goal for all of our kids. Is it not what is expected of general education students, as well? Of course it is.
The Feds, in their monitoring, have dinged multiple states for failing to have or implement tangible and meaningful transition services. It's an area of great importance yet highly misunderstood and poorly implemented by most school districts. There are some that are getting it right but not for the entirety of the affected student body. Also, the ones most prone to bad transition services are those in selfcontained special education environments. Why?
So much of a beneficial and meaningful transition program depends on staffing levels, staff competency in these areas, linkages to outside agencies that collaborate and coordinate with the schools to provide real and meaningful community opportunities for learning skills. Far too many IEPs where transition goals are developed focus on "pie in the sky" ideas.... over focusing on "identifying interests and interest skills" but never taking meaningful steps towards those areas (if those interests are even realistic, reasonable or attainable).
I've seen far too many IEPs with transition goals where the District staff notate that my client wants to be a teacher or an astronaut but are tracking on a diploma pathway that makes both of those "interest areas" an impossibility for the student. They "halfass" critical community/functional skills like "making purchases" by taking the kids down to vending machines and feeding money into it and pushing a button and "voila" they check off that the kids "mastered" making purchases.
A lot of parents are exhausted at this stage in their child's educational career and yet this might be the single biggest area that can transform their child's lifetime trajectory towards agencies, supports, school, university or other opportunities if the parents knew and understood HOW transition services/goals are supposed to function and where to push to make their District develop something meaningful.
Years ago, we had a family that moved to Alabama from Connecticut where he spent the first few hours of his school day doing functional academics (math/reading purposed for navigating the real world) and then spent the remainder of his school day working at local businesses that had coordinated and collaborated with the District for this purpose (not Goodwill, btw). The District had support at these businesses to assist, monitor and support the students in their paid employment developing actual employable skills to where the support could eventually be faded and the student independent. This young man hadn't been in a selfcontained classroom in years but, upon arriving in Alabama, his receiving school district immediately placed him in a selfcontained classroom at the high school where we discovered they were watching Dora the Explorer all day (as high schoolers) and there was no transition program available and their job coach had an office across the hall yet hadn't been in to serve any of those students in the selfcontained classroom.
This was one of our cases where the school district decided to gamble and go to due process hearing on..... they lost big time and badly. As a result, this District took action and overhauled their approach and thinking and started a Project Search with the local hospital and my client participated in Project Search after that point where the functional academics were provided at the hospital and then they were released to be supported in their work within the hospital and had rotating jobs so they could learn multiple areas. This school district still has this transition relationship with Project Search 10 years later.... would that have happened without the parents advocating for their son? Nope.... their advocacy and our representation not only impacted their son but countless other families over the past 10 years that don't even know that it was ONLY possible because a family stood up and said that's not right and you're not providing FAPE.