Indiana College Disability Services After an IEP: Accommodations, SOP, and What Changes

The legal framework that protected your child throughout K-12 does not follow them to college. The moment a student with a disability enrolls in postsecondary education, the entitlement to FAPE under IDEA disappears. What replaces it — Section 504 and the ADA — works on fundamentally different rules, and families who don't understand the shift often discover it the hard way during the first semester.

What Changes Between High School and College

Under IDEA, the school was responsible for identifying the student's disability, providing evaluations, writing the IEP, and delivering services. The burden was entirely on the school. In college, the burden flips to the student. No one is required to find them, evaluate them, or create a plan for them. The student must self-identify to the college's disability services office, provide their own documentation, and request specific accommodations.

The IEP itself does not transfer as a college accommodation plan. Colleges set their own documentation policies, so an IEP may not be enough on its own. What Indiana schools are required to provide is the Summary of Performance.

The Summary of Performance

Under 511 IAC 7-43-7, the school must convene a final CCC meeting and develop a Summary of Performance (SOP) for every student with a disability who exits special education, whether by graduation, aging out, or Certificate of Completion. The SOP documents the student's academic achievement, functional performance, and the accommodations and supports that worked during their school career.

The SOP is not the same as the Transition Portfolio (which is required for alternate diploma and Certificate of Completion students). The SOP is a formal exit document that specifically translates the student's school-based accommodations into language that college disability services offices can work with.

Request the SOP well before the student's final semester. The CCC needs time to pull together evaluation data, functional performance levels, and accommodation histories. If the SOP is thin or generic, the college disability services office will ask for more — and getting that documentation from a school after the student has exited is much harder.

How College Accommodations Work

College disability services offices operate under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II or III of the ADA (depending on whether the college is public or private). The student registers with the disability services office, provides documentation of their disability, and goes through an interactive process to determine what accommodations are appropriate.

Common accommodations include extended test time, note-taking services, priority registration, alternative format materials, reduced course loads, and housing modifications. What colleges are not required to provide: fundamental alterations to academic standards, personal attendants, tutoring beyond what's available to all students, or accommodations that would create an undue burden on the institution.

FAFSA and Financial Aid

Students with disabilities should complete the FAFSA (ideally by March of the final school year) regardless of whether they plan to disclose their disability to the financial aid office. Some disability-related expenses — assistive technology, personal care attendants, specialized transportation — can be documented as part of the student's cost of attendance, potentially increasing their financial aid eligibility.

Male students should handle Selective Service registration at age 18 alongside the other age-of-majority tasks; it is no longer a condition of federal financial aid.

The Indiana IEP Transition to Adulthood Guide includes a Summary of Performance Review Checklist that ensures your SOP contains everything a college disability services office will need, plus the timeline for when to request it from the school.

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