What Happens to Your Student’s IEP After High School?

Vicki Davis (00:00): Howard Gardner, in his book, Extraordinary Minds, says exceptional individuals have a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses. We want to help our students be exceptional as they transition from high school to college. But what happens when students who have a weakness have to advocate for themselves in college? Did you know that when a student with a learning difference graduates from high school and enrolls in college, according to the law, the accommodations that were required in high school become accommodations they have to ask for in college, and the university is allowed to say no.

If you work with or have a child with a learning difference, this is must-have advice.

Announcer (00:46): This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:50): Today’s show is sponsored by Ellis, a free tool from Children’s Health Council that helps teachers think through tough student moments and find practical next steps. Tune in at the end of the show and I’ll tell you more about Ellis. Today we’re talking with Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker, a nationally recognized special education expert. She earned her Ph.D. in global leadership and change from Pepperdine University and is an adjunct professor at California State University, Los Angeles.

And Dr. Baker is the best-selling author of The Traveling IEP. Toby, how has your own experience as an educator with a disability shaped your perspective?

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (01:38): As a child, in about 1987, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. In my 40s, I was diagnosed with ADHD because in the 80s, many women can attest to this. They weren’t diagnosed with ADHD. They were just little bubbly girls and talked a lot.

My experience as. Student with a learning disability and ADHD, I make connections with the students right on. I’ve done that. I was the one that teachers didn’t want to have on their list.

I was the one who needed extra help. Lectures didn’t work for me. I needed visuals. I’ve collected strategies that teachers need to employ these in their classrooms.

I went to six different schools, K through 12. So every other year, I went to a new school. Now looking back, what it taught me was I was privy to all different types of teachers. So I was able to see the good teachers, the teachers that did hands-on learning, student-centered learning, spatial learning.

And then there were some who were straight in rows, looking at the front, parochial school. There were different types of learning environments. I learned to advocate at a very young age because if I needed help with something, I had to either go to my parents who would then go to the teachers who, if they didn’t listen, then they had to go from the teachers to the administrators and the administrators to the superintendent. And it was like a whole thing.

This is why I wrote The Traveling IEP is because. What happens in the law after you graduate from high school, yes, you still have an IEP, but when you go right from high school and enroll in a college, the national law switches from IDEA coverage to, ADA coverage so the laws actually change for the coverage when you go to college so when I went to college I went from having all these supports to all these little layers and so it was much different and that was why in my heart I had to, I had to write The Traveling IEP, I have met so many parents, wonderful parents who reach out to me every day thanking me, for my story because it’s a memoir. And now we’ve got assistive technology and all of these things that we can use. We need to show the parents and the teachers together how are the students going to move from elementary school, middle school, high school, and then into college.

And then if they choose not to go to college, what are they going to do instead as adults?

Vicki Davis (04:18): One thing I work really hard to teach the parents of the students I teach who have learning differences is that our goal is to help our students advocate for themselves because they won’t be able to put their parent in their backpack. And what do you tell them to do so they can learn to advocate?

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (04:37): Some of the things that I did to advocate for myself and then I teach others how to advocate. When I met professors, oftentimes I was 17, 18, 19 years old, and here’s a 50-year-old man telling me that they’re going to give me a grade. And I had to figure out how I was going to communicate my needs, my accommodation. So do you know what your accommodations are?

I needed to sit right up front. So I would have to sit and write in the in a notebook and then we would go to the library and I’d copy my friend’s notes or sometimes I had an actual tape recorder and we had to um, I had to go to the dean by myself at 17 or 18 or 19 and say, this is what I need. How are we going to make this happen? So not everybody is articulate as me.

I’m a little bit feisty. And a lot of it is personality differences. Sometimes you have students sit in the back of the classroom because that’s where they’re most comfortable or they’re shy and introverted. And that’s OK.

They won’t necessarily go to the dean and get in their face a little bit. They won’t go to office hours. They won’t go somewhere early. Maybe they sleep in because they really need the sleep.

So these are just things that I think about when they’re advocating. What does advocacy really look like? It’s different for everybody.

Vicki Davis (06:03): One thing, and this just comes from working with my own children, is that you’re not asking for a gimme. You still got to do the work. You still got to show up. You still got to come to class.

You’re going to study more than everybody else because that’s just a fact. You’ve got to. And so learning how to professionally, respectfully advocate, what are some of the most common misconceptions and misunderstandings that educators and sometimes even parents might have about kids with learning differences?

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (06:33): When I did my dissertation at Pepperdine, I interviewed professors and did just what you said. What do you know about special education law and, you know, changing your style a little bit? Two of the things that I found, one, 100% of them did not know special education law. Nobody goes and studies case law.

They get their schedules together, their books together, their itinerary. They don’t go look at the disability. They should, but they don’t always go look at the disability law. And the other thing is what I found was the professors that did know something about disabilities and were really engaged with their students with learning differences was that they themselves had learning differences.

Some of the professors had learning differences themselves. One of them had dyslexia. Then also they had kids with learning differences themselves. So they had kids at home who had IEPs.

So they were able to transfer that knowledge of what they had learned at home or in school to their college setting. But that doesn’t always happen. it. So I said, what accommodations?

They had no idea. They said, well, I just do whatever the accessibility office requires. So I They lean very, very heavily on use the college. There’s this toss between use the college and the professor.

If I don’t know, I don’t have to do it. So I was very much like, you need training. You need to ask.

Vicki Davis (08:07): The Traveling IEP, your book, is a bestseller. So how do you think it has changed the way that educators and parents approach IEP?

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (08:17): Well, one of the resources that I offer, I have this wonderful visual that I came up with in the book and also in my research that’s published. When you think of an IEP, I can’t even tell you how many IEPs I’ve written in my life. That’s why I wrote about IEPs because I’ve been doing this since 2004. They represent a person.

So when somebody says there are too many IEPs, well, are there too many students with learning differences? No, they have learning differences. They need these accommodations. That’s part of it is it is individualized.

I always say in my class that when I was teaching, I had what we call a special day class. I don’t just have one lesson or two lessons. I had 15 lessons. How many kids there are?

That’s how many lessons you have. So the thing about the IEP is, In high school, K through 12, you have this accommodation as free appropriate public education. However, because the law changes in college, they are not transferred. And so what are the accommodations that you have under the IDEA law are not applicable in college.

They do not always transfer. So when a student goes to college and says, I need note-taking and this and that, the university has the right to say no.

Vicki Davis (09:44): It’s heartbreaking because they’re not required and it’s a fight. Some people want to act like you’re giving kids an unfair disadvantage when you give them accommodations. But if you had somebody with a broken leg, you wouldn’t make them hop. You would at least give them crutches.

And even with crutches, they’re not going to go as fast as a person who has both legs. But they at least have a hope of getting one direction to another, even with more effort. It’s unfair to ask them to hop when you could give them crutches. What are you hearing from people?

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (10:17): One of the things that I always convey to parents, and this is why they keep coming and buying my book and meeting me, is I struggled with the fact that the age-old question, am I smart? When I was a kid, they did tracking. They still do some sort of tracking. People who don’t know what tracking is, tracking is when you’re in school, they sort of sort out who’s smart, who’s gifted, who’s maybe has a learning difference, needs to have an assessment.

They have to assess for giftedness too. And before you can be diagnosed by a school psychologist or a licensed psychologist, once you’re diagnosed. I was in the tracking of she’s never going to go to college. Well, here I sit with a PhD, but my guidance counselors were telling me, don’t even apply to college, you won’t get in.

Well, I said, thank you very much and some other wonderful things and went and applied and got into college and graduated with a 3.9. Yeah. So I have told my parents, my students, all of them when I speak and I tell you here today, don’t let anybody tell you what you can and can’t do. That’s right.

You decide what you’re going to do. I decided I was going to go to college, get a Ph.D. and teach college. And here I sit doing that, even though nobody thought I was ever going to graduate from high school. They didn’t think I could graduate from high school.

They didn’t think I’d go on and go to college. Oh, she’ll never get a job. I hope she marries well. That was something else.

Oh, you better get married or somebody will take care of you. Well, I just happen to make a lot of money at my job and I do very well. Thank you. So when I hear people say because they have a learning difference, they’ll never be able to.

And I’m like, don’t let anybody tell you. You don’t tell people that they aren’t smart. I am smart. I know I am.

What inspires students with learning differences or even just in general? What do they really want to do? What can they contribute? Because once they get that, if they’re struggling in school, they can hyper-focus.

I hyper-focus. When I have 42 IEPs to write, I got to boom, boom, boom, get them done. Schedule it out, and I’ve got stickies and post-its, and I’ve been doing it for years. That’s my masterpiece.

Vicki Davis (12:43): Somebody listening to this show needs to be hearing what you’re saying, Toby, about they told me not to go to college, and I went and doggone it, I have my PhD and doggone it, I didn’t need anybody to take care of me. I’m taking care of myself. Like, that’s a message.

Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker (12:58): When I join my class for my sessions that I teach, I tell them I have, you know, ADHD. I was diagnosed. I tell them my story. I’m like, you know what?

I’m okay with me and I want this to be a safe space for learning. All of a sudden, these other students who had registered with the Office of Accessibility, Oh, professor, I do too. And really, teachers need to think, how can I change me so that all students can learn? You need a connection, the student-teacher connection.

That’s what it is.

Vicki Davis (13:32): I always say you have to relate to educate. You have to relate to educate. That’s what underlies great learning is relationship. It’s about belief that every human has something to contribute.

I call my classroom Masterpiece Theater. I tell kids that each person has unique talents and skills and facets of their personality that they can just really shine. And who are we to disparage another human being? The book is The Traveling IEP, a best-selling book about helping improve individualized education plans.

Look at the show notes, follow Toby, learn what she does, pick up the book, and advocate, advocate, advocate, and believe in your children. Thank you, Ellis, for sponsoring this week’s shows on The 10-Minute Teacher. Ellis is a free tool for K-12 educators from the Children’s Health Council. Here’s how it works.

You type in what actually happened with a student, what you saw, what you already tried, and where you’re stuck. Then Ellis gives you practical, evidence-aligned next steps from a knowledge base of content from trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood, and others. Ellis gives you information, not clinical advice, and it doesn’t collect personally identifiable student information. It’s a far better place to start than general purpose AI tools because Ellis isn’t pulling from the open internet.

So the next time you leave school still thinking about that one student, go to coolcatteacher.com forward slash Ellis. That’s coolcatteacher.com forward slash Ellis. Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you.

Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.