Jori Pace

Professor Reece

English 1020

September 5, 2014

Research Paper Proposal:

Nine Strategies to Improve College Transition Planning for Students with Disabilities

Thesis: Does the nine different strategies at the district level help students with learning disabilities, transition smoothly into college?

This article talks about nine different strategies to help students with disabilities transition into a college environment, and the different things they can do to learn how to access the help when they get to a college level. It talks about how students feel like their college courses are much too hard and that it isn’t what they were expecting because they weren’t prepared enough in high school. They talk about their different struggles and things they are having difficulties with entering into the college level. The research from this article shows that when enrolling into college courses the accommodations and services aren’t offered up front. The student is responsible to ask for, and look into getting help. It gives ideas and ways to educate families about the help that is offered to more easily transition their student. The family is required to provide and prove documentation for their student’s disability in order for them to get the special accommodations from the University. The purpose of this article is to offer different strategies to help students with disabilities accelerate and improve and the same rate as other students and to help them better understand their class requirements and what is expected from them.

To get further information about this topic, I will search more articles on this subject, look up books on this subject, and interview a Special Education teacher and ask what she is doing to help her students move on and transition onto the next level.  

The counterarguments I anticipate are those who have tried these nine methods to help their students graduate and move onto the college level, and haven’t worked. I have not seen these methods put into action myself so theoretically these might work but I myself wouldn’t know without seeing them in action. People also might argue and say that it isn’t fair that these students are expected to seek out the help themselves and that this article might be contradicting because it is listing nine different ways to help them, but then saying they are on their own to actually get the help. Those who have already missed out on this opportunity might not think it is fair that they can’t do anything about their past grades because the school didn’t inform them enough on how to get the student help from the beginning.

I will be honest, this assignment was a little confusing to me. I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing or if I was doing it right. After reading the article that I chose I wasn't positive on what I was suppose to be taking from it and I was confused on what information I needed to be using in my paper. Also I don't have a declared major yet so it was a struggle for me to find an article that I was interested enough in to write about. I don't know how effective this assignment was in helping me prepare for the final goal of writing a rhetorical analysis.