Madaus, J. W., Gelbar, N., Dukes, L. L., III, Taconet, A., & Faggella-Luby, M. (2021). Are there predictors of success for students with disabilities pursuing postsecondary education ? Career Development and Transition for Exceptional Individuals , 44 (4), 191–202. https://doi.org/10.1177/2165143420976526

Accommodations were not specified in this review of literature; the focus was on whether there are evidence-based predictors of postsecondary success for students with disabilities with regard to retention, academic achievement, and graduation, and whether use of accommodations was a relevant factor.

This was a literature review of 28 studies published between 1990 and 2019. Nearly all studies were reported to have been done in the U.S. context; only one was non-U.S., in Australia. Participants in the studies were postsecondary students with various disabilities across the range of disability categories including multiple disabilities.

This review was guided by previous reviews of predictors conducted by NTACT (Mazzotti et al., 2016; Test, Mazzotti, et al., 2009). The researchers conducted the literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009). The researcher did a Boolean search using keywords gathered from search terms used in previous reviews. Predictors of postsecondary success under consideration were retention, academic achievement, and graduation. The researchers added the term GPA to the keywords to focus the search toward postsecondary outcomes.

The authors discovered that there were not enough studies to validate a core set of evidence-based practices that positively predict outcomes for students with disabilities in postsecondary education. This point suggested that the field of postsecondary education and disability ought to employ more rigorous predictive methodologies and examine long-term measures in order to improve the outcomes of students with disabilities in postsecondary education.