Ohio Summary of Performance and Indicator 14: What Happens When Your Student Exits

When your child walks out of the school building for the last time — whether at 18, 19, or 22 — two things are supposed to happen that most families never hear about until it's too late to use them well. The school owes a Summary of Performance document, and the state will try to contact your young adult a year later for an Indicator 14 survey. Understanding both gives you leverage while your child is still in school.

What the Summary of Performance Is

The Summary of Performance (SOP) is a mandatory document that Ohio school districts must provide to every student with an IEP who exits school by graduating with a regular diploma or by aging out. It's required under IDEA Section 614(c)(5), and Ohio's operating standards under OAC 3301-51-07 include it as a required transition plan component.

The SOP should contain:

• Academic achievement summary — the student's current academic achievement and relevant functional academic abilities
• Functional performance summary — how the student performs in daily living, social interaction, self-determination, and other non-academic areas
• Recommendations for accommodations and supports — specific suggestions for what the student will need in postsecondary education, employment, or independent living settings

The practical value of the SOP is that it's the bridge document between the school system and every adult service provider the student will interact with. When your young adult applies to a community college disability services office, registers with OOD for vocational rehabilitation, or applies for county board supports, the SOP provides structured documentation of their abilities and needs from the professionals who worked with them most recently.

Why Most SOPs Are Useless

Here's the problem: many Ohio districts treat the SOP as an afterthought. They generate it on the student's last day using boilerplate language pulled from the most recent IEP, without meaningful detail about what the student can actually do or what accommodations they need in specific adult settings.

A useful SOP should be specific enough that an OOD counselor could read it and immediately understand what kind of job coaching the student needs, or a college disability coordinator could set up appropriate accommodations without starting a new evaluation from scratch.

Families can influence the SOP quality by requesting that the IEP team begin drafting it during the student's second-to-last year of school, not on the final day. The draft should be reviewed at the last annual IEP meeting and updated based on the most current transition assessment data.

What Indicator 14 Measures

Indicator 14 is one of the federal Special Education Profile indicators that every state must report to the U.S. Department of Education. It measures post-school outcomes for youth with IEPs one year after they leave school.

Ohio tracks four outcome categories:

1. Higher education — enrolled in a two-year or four-year college or university
2. Other postsecondary education or training — enrolled in a certificate program, vocational training, or another postsecondary training activity
3. Competitive integrated employment — working in a job in the community earning at or above minimum wage
4. Other employment — working in employment that does not meet the competitive integrated employment category

Students who are not engaged in any of these outcomes one year after exit are counted as "not engaged" — and that's the number districts are trying to minimize.

How Indicator 14 Data Gets Collected

Approximately one year after the student exits school, the former school district (or a contracted survey provider) attempts to contact the young adult or their family by phone, mail, or email to ask about their current status. The survey is typically brief — a few questions about whether the person is working, in school, or participating in training.

Responding to the survey is voluntary. Many families never receive the contact attempt (wrong phone number, moved), and many who do don't respond because they don't understand what it's for.

Why Indicator 14 Matters While Your Student Is Still in School

Indicator 14 data feeds back into the district's special education profile and influences state monitoring decisions. Districts with poor post-school outcomes face increased ODEW oversight and may be required to implement improvement plans.

This creates an indirect incentive for districts to provide better transition services — the students who receive effective job training, community-based instruction, and multi-agency coordination during school are the ones who show up as "competitively employed" on the Indicator 14 survey a year later.

As a parent, you can reference Indicator 14 in IEP meetings: "We want our child to be competitively employed one year after exit. What specific transition services will get us there?" This frames the conversation around measurable post-school outcomes, which is exactly what the federal accountability system is designed to promote.

What This Means for Your Transition Timeline

Before exit year: Request that the IEP team begin drafting the SOP with specific, actionable recommendations. Review the draft at the annual IEP meeting. Make sure the SOP addresses accommodation needs in the specific settings your young adult will enter — the college program they've applied to, the type of workplace they're targeting, the residential setting they'll live in.

At exit: Obtain copies of the final SOP, all transition assessment data, and the most recent IEP. At age 18, FERPA rights generally belong to the student; a parent may access these educational records when authorized as a guardian or through an educational power of attorney or other valid release. The school must provide access to the records under FERPA.

One year post-exit: When the Indicator 14 survey arrives, respond. The data shapes how Ohio allocates transition resources, and accurate reporting helps districts that are doing transition well demonstrate their outcomes.

The Ohio IEP Transition to Adulthood Guide includes a school exit document checklist that lists every record the student should leave school with, plus a timeline for requesting the SOP draft early enough to make it useful.

See more Ohio guides →