Lisa Grillo

Personnel Preparation in Transition Education, A High Need for Historically Black Colleges and Universities:

Teachers of color have the potential to increase postsecondary outcomes for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with disabilities by implementing culturally-responsive, evidence-based transition activities. As institutions, which produce large numbers of teachers of color and commit their research agendas and resources to responding to and solving educational problems faced by CLD students, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are uniquely positioned to provide culturally responsive transition education programs in their respective schools of education.  The authors call for HBCUs to move toward prioritizing transition education as they continue their mission to improve academic and postsecondary outcomes for CLD students.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are “Black academic institutions established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and still is, the education of Black Americans” (Roebuck & Murty, 1993, p. 3). These institutions were founded decades following the Civil War primarily by the federal government’s Freedmen’s Bureau, abolitionist missionaries, and Northern philanthropists whose motivation was to train African-Americans for the industrial enterprises (Gasman, Spencer, & Orphan, 2015). HBCUs, the only higher education option for African-Americans until the mid-1960s, also trained AfricanAmerican teachers and preachers (Gasman et al., 2015). Higher education options for African-Americans expanded to include Predominantly White Universities (PWIs) after the Civil Rights Movement (Ellis, Smith, & Barnett, 2016; Palmer, 2010). However, HBCUs have remained a viable choice for students, primarily for students of color. Currently the 105 HBCUs enroll 11% of Black students in the United States, yet they represent less than 3% of colleges and universities in the country (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011).