Students with Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities Prepared for Workforce

via the White House Office of Public Engagement (6.20.11): 

Making History for Students with Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities

by Rayna Aylward

As high school seniors all across the country graduated this week, history was quietly being made in Washington, D.C. at the Department of Education for 23 D.C. public school students with developmental and intellectual disabilities. They, like their peers across the country, were graduating too. They all participated in a program called Project SEARCH. The 15-year-old program now operates in 39 states and four foreign countries, but this is the first year that the federal government has hosted the project in three agencies including the Departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.

The goal of Project SEARCH is to prepare high school seniors with developmental and intellectual disabilities for employment. Instead of attending classes in a regular high school, the participating students reported to work every day in one of the federal agencies. They received vocational training from a special education teacher for part of the day, and then worked as interns in different offices, learning skills that would prepare them for paid employment in the government or private sector. Job coaches who were part of the Project SEARCH team accompanied the students to their assigned offices to teach them the specific job skills needed to fulfill each task...

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