CIRCLES Current Implementation and History

Although post-school outcomes for students with disabilities have improved in the past 10 years, students with disabilities still consistently experience poor outcomes in the areas of education, employment, and independent living when compared to their peers without disabilities. CIRCLES is a transition-planning service delivery model designed to guide schools in implementing interagency collaboration at three teams, including Community-Level Team (CLT), School-Level Team (SLT), and the IEP team, with a focus on student involvement and leadership throughout the process. Based on previous research with the model (Aspel, Bettis, Quinn, Test, & Wood, 1999; Povenmire-Kirk et al., 2015). In 2017, Dr. David Test received a grant from the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) to explore CIRCLES as a large-scale implementation in multiple school districts and see what the effects were on students’ self-determination and IEP goals (R324AQ110018).

We have recently received a grant from the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) to evaluate the CIRCLES intervention to generate evidence that CIRCLES improves proximal student, teacher, and community agency personnel outcomes and subsequent distal student outcomes (R324A220161). This efficacy study will address limitations of the original efficacy using a rigorous design that meets the IES What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) design standards, and addressing issues related to implementation fidelity and outcome measures. The CIRCLES intervention aims to improve transition outcomes for students with disabilities by improving interagency collaboration among teachers and community agency personnel to increase (a) student self-determination, (b) knowledge and perspectives of the transition planning process, and (c) secondary and postsecondary engagement.

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R324A220161 to University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.