In Boonton, NJ, Linda Mauriello helps young people with disabilities prepare to enter the workforce after leaving school. They learn to set career goals, create resumes and build relationships at work. Sometimes they get help in finding internships and receive support at work as well.
A student with multiple disabilities trained in a school cafe has been hired and still working there five years later. A student with autism trained in local Walgreens, learning time management and working with customers. He was leased and now responsible for opening the store.
Ms Mauriello is a big fan of the program. “My students have really benefited from it,” he said.
But hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities who are eligible for similar help do not receive it. Federal and state governments spend about half a billion dollars each year on such services, but most parents – and even some school officials – do not even know the program.
In 2023, New Jersey had the lowest percentage of the nation – about 2 % – of the eligible students who received assistance, according to the analysis of the Hechinger state data.
For 10 years, New Jersey’s program has faded. And the decentralized state’s school governance system has prevented efforts to take services in schools.
Interviews with dozens of supporters, teachers and parents depict a contemporary bureaucratic labyrinth, which leaves tens of thousands of students without services.
New Jersey officials recognize the problem.
“We know that there are not enough people who are fully aware of all our services,” said Charyl Yarbrough, Assistant Commissioner for Employment in the Department of Labor and Temporary Director of the New Jersey Department of Occupational Rehabilitation. “Nobody wants to be a secret with the best-to-have.”
Throughout the country only 40 % of people with disabilities aged 16 to 64 are employed, although experts say most are able to hold jobs. Congress created the school age training program a decade ago, channeling money to states.
But only about 295,000 students received some form of services – from about 3.1 million eligible – in 2023, the latest year for which national data is available. In New Jersey last year, that number was 1,370, out of more than 80,000 eligible students. The state of New York was not much more successful: it serves about 5 % of its eligible students.
When work training programs approach students with disabilities, supporters say they are often inadequate and states face minimal accountability for their weaknesses.
“If young people have the opportunity to be exposed to the world of work and take services ahead of time, they can work independently of the community,” said Maureen McGuire-Kuletz, co-director of the George Washington University Rehabilitation Center Center for Rehabilitation Center . “This was hope. If you got early, then some challenges later would not exist.”
While employees of the US Department of Education acknowledge that so -called employment transition services should be available to all students with disabilities, they note that the law does not state that everyone has access to services. All students do not choose to receive them and some may receive the help they need from their schools, Danté Q. Allen, Commissioner for the Department of Rehabilitation Services until last month, he said in an email.
In New Jersey, the state government usually uses external contractors – mainly non -profit organizations and universities – to provide such training. It went $ 14.6 million in federal and state capital in this education in 2023, last year for which full data is available.
But many parents do not know what their children are eligible and how to get it.
Bridgette Breece’s son did well with his practical work at his high school in Burlington County, NJ, but his disabilities made it difficult to read and struggled with textbooks.
Worried about his future, Ms Breece tried to get some career help before graduating. He saw a post on Facebook on the state -run professional rehabilitation service, which serves exactly this purpose. But she says that a consultant told her that her son was not eligible until she became 18 – which was untrue.
After graduating last spring, he found a job as a trailer driver, which he was good and enjoyed. However, the company demanded all employees to report periodically to request overnight. Anxiety disability made him scare that he would lose a call, so he didn’t sleep for several nights in a row and had to stop.
Before employment training, which he could receive during the Gymnasium, could teach him how to ask for accommodation or how to investigate jobs that fit his skills and interests. But he never received it. His mother – like most parents in New Jersey – had no idea that the program existed. He has applied for social security benefits for him, something that none of them wanted.
“It’s embarrassed,” he said. “My heart breaks for the child. He wants to work, he wants to do good. I just wish we could help while still in high school. ”
Maureen Piccoli Kerne, who launched a high school transition program to Ridgefield, NJ, says that job counseling is critical.
“It’s important because then they know what they want to do,” he said. “They know what their strengths are. They know how to ask for accommodation at work.”
She recently worked with a young woman who loves libraries. Her developmental disability prevented her from attending a traditional college, but she took classes online to become an assistant librarian and got a job at a public library on Long Island.
“He was so excited about the lessons,” Mrs Kerne said. “He has a job he loves and is productive. And that can happen when you work with young people early.”
For more than 30 years, the federal education law has requested schools to help students with disabilities plan their transition from high school. But there is often a gap between what a school can offer and the type of training or advice a student needs. There it is supposed that pre-employment services are supposed to help.
Prior to 2014, government professional rehabilitation services worked mainly with adults. This changed when Congress called on organizations to offer employment services to all students with disabilities, starting at the age of 14.
Most New Jersey students never get the choice.
Local teachers say it is difficult to get overloaded government training advisers and, when they do, delays let parents and students wait for months for services. Some advisers say it is difficult for them to get to school staff – and that some local schools claim that they already provide what their students need.
Some New Jersey schools have forged good relationships with government councilors who help students find trial work experiences. And some schools provide high quality transition services on their own, without the help of the State Vocational Rehabilitation Service. But in most cases, this disconnected system is broken.
Ten years after the creation of the federal program, “everyone is still struggling,” said Gwen Orlowski, New Jersey’s New Jersey, executive director. “It’s just dysfunctional.”
The law ordered occupational rehabilitation services to spend at least 15 % of their federal money on employment services for young people. However, many states have come to seek to provide services to thousands of additional people without increasing the budget.
There are few consequences for huge gaps in access to services. Politics supporters accuse the lack of supervision by state and federal organizations. The Rehabilitation Services Management is conducting annual reviews of professional rehabilitation agencies, but some states go years without defining problems.
“We have more supervision,” said Julie Christensen, executive director of the Association of People who first support employment. “It should not be the wild wild west.”
Federal education officials say that existing supervisory mechanisms lead to improvement. In 2021, 23 states spent less than 15 % required by law. This number was reduced to 10 states in 2022, the latest year for which the data is available.
Zoe Sullivan, superior to Collingswood High School with Down Syndrome, had said since she was in the ninth grade that she wanted to go to a four -year residential schedule, but her mother, Kim Brooks, said at school.
“I want to go to a college,” Zoe said, sat in a cafe near her home. “I want to do lessons and learn to be independent.”
Last spring, Mrs Brooks discovered, very accidentally, for a non -profit college preparation program for students with developmental disabilities – he saw it in the position of a friend’s Instagram. She has been confused to submit applications to programs that she and life have found only from mouth to mouth and hours of research.
“It’s like a secret society,” Ms Brooks said. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We have really lost many years. ”
This story was produced by the Hechinger exhibition, a non -profit, independent news organization that covers education.
