Student Disability Services Within The 28 Florida Community Colleges

The purpose of this research study was to investigate perceptions and activities of disability support program administrators in Florida community colleges regarding program administration and evaluation. The study further sought to document if any relationships existed between selected organizational and staffing characteristics and the program\u27s ability to follow an established set of standards for program administration and evaluation. A total of 25 disability support administrators (89.3% response rate) completed a phone survey designed for this study. The study revealed that there were many inconsistencies among the higher education disability support programs in regard to programming, staffing and data collecting activities. The common denominator for determining the extent of data collection being performed within the responding community colleges appeared to be the Florida Department of Education, specifically the criteria requested annually by the Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Education. At all of the institutions surveyed, data collection activities were concentrated on numerical student data and did not consistently include program evaluation information. Finally, administrator training in program evaluation was positively associated with the responding disability support program\u27s ability to participate in program evaluation activities. This study concluded with discussion of proposed recommendations for disability support administrators in the Florida community colleges