Advisory council: state enrollment reporting undercounts students in IDD transition programs

The advisory council that advises the Higher Education Coordinating Board on postsecondary education for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities opened its March 13 meeting by flagging persistent gaps in state reporting that can leave some students off the books.

"We found that the data captured in the CBM didn't accurately reflect the programs that exist across the state or their enrollment numbers," Sabrina Gonzales Alcedo, the council's presiding officer, told members as she outlined why the council is revising its survey approach. The CBM is the coordinating board's official campus reporting tool; council members said its census-based structure can exclude students who participate in transition or non-matriculating programs.

Nina Zuna, a council member, said the distinction matters for legislative decision-making: "We do need to separate out that the students with IDD that are enrolled in a university program that are matriculating students are 1 set of students with IDD," she said, arguing the inventory should separately count non-matriculating participants so the legislature sees both populations.

Program directors and campus representatives described operational reasons for the undercount: some CTPs and transition programs are housed outside registrar or institutional research offices, and reporting officials may not be connected to program staff. Anita Lang, program director of Aggie ACHIEVE at Texas A&M, said institutions with multiple programs filled the inventory by submitting one entry per program but found that the current survey form can make that awkward to capture.

Members recommended practical survey fixes: add "other" text boxes and comment fields so programs can explain nonstandard designs; allow multiple program-name fields or repeatable entries so institutions do not have to overwrite one program with another; and include checkboxes that clarify whether program completers receive a degree, license, certificate, or no credential.

Wayland (Higher Education Coordinating Board staff) said the inventory will be distributed in May and completed by June so staff can draft the report in July for an August 1 submission. "We typically try to have it done by July," he said, describing the calendar for the report year.

Next steps: the council will incorporate the suggested edits, recirculate the draft survey to members for review before distribution, and rely on the inventory as a complementary source to CBM data when preparing the 2026 access report to the legislature.