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This article presents a brief historical review of school reform movements from 1982 to present and an in-depth analysis of the most recent reform initiatives (standards movement, high stakes testing, school-to-work, and charter schools) and explores the apparent cumulative effects of these reforms on youth with disabilities in secondary school. A review of the literature on best practices in secondary special education is provided, against which the practices, policies, and outcomes of these reforms can be judged. Several commonalities among these educational reform initiatives are noted. These include paying attention to increasing achievement levels, holding state and local education agencies accountable for educational results, and increasing parental involvement. Issues concerning the inclusion and accommodation of students with disabilities are also noted. While the findings of this review indicate that these reforms have many good intentions and features, both for students without and with disabilities, little empirical evidence exists to date regarding the impact and benefits of education reforms for students with disabilities. Systematic evaluations conducted at the national, state, and local levels must be undertaken to document the effects of these reforms on the achievement and outcomes of children and youth with disabilities. 1 Issues Influencing the Future of Transition Programs and Services in the United States 4 Green (1987) summarized the difference from the first wave of reform: Perhaps most importantly, however, the individual school is the focus of the second wave of reform. While previous reports called for leadership, it was generally at the state level; now the cry is for local involvement and reforms that improve what happens in the classroom itself. (p. 4) Second-wave reformers began to view teachers more as professionals than as technicians (Petrie, 1990). These reform efforts were characterized more by decentralized decision making in schools, and by restructuring initiatives that were managed by school-site councils and parent groups (Carlson, 1996). The third wave of reform began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and by many accounts is continuing through the end of the century. The differentiating factor from earlier reform waves according to O’Day (1995), however, was the focus on systemic change “combin(ing) the vitality and creativity of bottom-up change efforts with an enabling and supportive structure at more centralized levels of the system” (p. 100). Murphy (1990) adds to this notion of systemic reform an additional difference from prior reform efforts-a direct focus on children through an “integrated, interorganizational, interprofessional service model” (p. 29). He states: Unlike . . . the two earlier eras, those in Wave 3 go beyond schooling to encompass a comprehensive system for delivery of services to children. (p. 29) An additional defining feature of third wave reforms is a focus on the whole school, not just classrooms or curricula, as the unit of change (Wasley, Hampel, & Clark, 1997). The Goals 2000 and School-to-Work legislation are clearly characteristic of third-wave reform initiatives, in that they provide federal support to states and local communities for locally identified approaches to whole school reform while requiring a unifying vision, a coherent set of instructional policies aligned with that vision, and restructured governance and resource allocation that places authority and decision making at the school level (O’Day, 1995). As third wave reform initiatives have moved from a topdown centralized orientation, through local school empowerment, and finally to a systemic coordination of services focused on children, these transformations would appear to successively benefit children and youth who are most at risk, and for whom the broadest array of confusing and interconnecting services are available. The purpose of this article is to explore the apparent cumulative effects of these waves of reform on youth with disabilities in our nation’s secondary schools. This article contains four sections. First, a brief historical review of the school reform movement has been provided. Second, several key reforms that are currently underway nationwide have been selected for review through an examination of the theoretical and empirical literature. Third, a review of the literature on best practices in secondary special education schooling has been provided, against which the practices, policies, and outcomes of these several reforms can be judged. Finally, a set of conclusions and policy recommendations is provided.
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