In Boonton, N.J., Linda Mauriello helps young people with disabilities prepare to enter the work force after they leave school. They learn to set career goals, create resumes and build relationships at work. Sometimes they get help finding internships and receive support on the job, too.
One student with multiple disabilities trained at a school cafeteria, got hired and is still working there five years later. A student with autism trained at the local Walgreens, learning time management and working with customers. He was hired and is now in charge of opening up the store.
Ms. Mauriello is a big fan of the program. “My students have really benefited from it,” she said.
But hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities who are eligible for similar assistance do not receive it. The federal and state governments spend about half a billion dollars each year for such services, but most parents — and even some school officials — don’t even know the program exists.
In 2023, New Jersey had the nation’s lowest proportion — roughly 2 percent — of eligible students getting help, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of government data.
For 10 years, New Jersey’s program has languished. And the state’s decentralized school governance system has hampered efforts to get the services into schools.
Interviews with dozens of advocates, educators and parents depict a confusing bureaucratic maze, one that leaves tens of thousands of students without services.
New Jersey officials acknowledge the problem.
“We know that there’s not enough people who are fully aware of all of our services,” said Charyl Yarbrough, assistant commissioner of employment accessibility services at New Jersey’s Department of Labor and interim director of the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services. “Nobody wants to be a best-kept secret.”
Across the country, only 40 percent of people with disabilities ages 16 to 64 are employed, even though experts say most are capable of holding jobs. Congress created the school-age job training program a decade ago, funneling money to the states.
But only about 295,000 students received some form of services — out of an estimated 3.1 million who are eligible — in 2023, the most recent 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. New York State has not been much more successful: It is serving about 5 percent of its eligible students.
When job training programs do reach students with disabilities, advocates say they are often inadequate, and states face little accountability for their shortcomings.
“If young people have an opportunity to be exposed to the world of work, and they get services ahead of time, they can work independently in the community,” said Maureen McGuire-Kuletz, co-director of the George Washington University Center for Rehabilitation Counseling Research and Education. “That was the hope. If you got in early, then some challenges later on would not exist.”
While officials at the U.S. Department of Education acknowledge that so-called pre-employment transition services must be made available to all students with disabilities, they note that the law does not mandate that they all access the services. Not all students choose to receive them, and some may be getting the help they need from their schools, Danté Q. Allen, the commissioner of the department’s Rehabilitation Services Administration until last month, said in an email.
In New Jersey, the state government usually uses outside contractors — mostly nonprofit organizations and universities — to provide such training. It spent $14.6 million in federal and state funds on this training in 2023, the last year for which complete data is available.
But many parents are unaware of what their children are eligible for and how to get it.
Bridgette Breece’s son did well with the hands-on work at his high school in Burlington County, N.J., but his disabilities made reading difficult, and he struggled with textbook-based exams.
Worried about his future, Ms. Breece tried to get him some career help before graduation. She saw a Facebook post about the state vocational rehabilitation agency, which serves exactly that purpose. But she says a counselor there told her that her son wasn’t eligible until he turned 18 — which was untrue.
After he graduated last spring, he found a job as a tow-truck driver, which he was good at and enjoyed. But the company required all employees to take turns periodically being on call for overnight emergencies. His anxiety disability made him terrified that he would miss a call, so he didn’t sleep for several nights in a row and had to quit.
Pre-employment training, which he could have received during high school, could have taught him how to request an accommodation or how to explore jobs that fit his abilities and interests. But he never received that. His mother — like most parents in New Jersey — had no idea the program existed. She has now applied for Social Security benefits for him, something neither of them ever wanted.
“He’s embarrassed,” she said. “My heart breaks for the kid. He wants to work, he wants to do good. I just wish we could have gotten help while he was still in high school.”
Maureen Piccoli Kerne, who started a transition program at a high school in Ridgefield, N.J., says counseling before job placement is crucial.
“It’s important because then they know what they like to do,” she said. “They know what their strengths are. They know how to ask for accommodations 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 courses online to become a librarian’s assistant and got a job at a public library on Long Island.
“She was so excited about the courses,” said Ms. Kerne. “She has a job she loves and she’s being productive, and that’s what can happen when you work with young people early.”
For more than 30 years, federal education law has required schools to help students with disabilities plan for their transition out of high school. But there’s often a gap between what a school can provide and the kind of training or counseling a student needs. That’s where the pre-employment services are supposed to help.
Before 2014, state vocational rehabilitation agencies primarily worked with adults. That changed when Congress directed the agencies to offer services geared toward employment to all students with disabilities, starting as early as age 14.
Most New Jersey students never get the option.
Local teachers say it is difficult to reach overburdened state job-training counselors and, when they do, delays leave parents and students waiting for months for services. Some counselors say it is difficult for them to reach school staff members — and that some local schools claim they are already providing everything their students need.
Some New Jersey schools have forged good relationships with state counselors, who help students find trial work experiences. And some schools provide high-quality transition services on their own, without the help of the state’s vocational rehabilitation agency. But in most cases, that disjointed system is broken.
Ten years after the federal program was put in place, “everybody’s still struggling,” said Gwen Orlowski, executive director of Disability Rights New Jersey. “It’s just dysfunctional.”
The law mandated that vocational rehabilitation agencies spend at least 15 percent of their federal money on employment services for young people. But many states balked at being asked to offer services to thousands of additional people without a budget increase.
There are few consequences for the massive gaps in access to services; policy advocates blame a lack of oversight by state and federal agencies. The Rehabilitation Services Administration conducts annual reviews of vocational rehabilitation agencies, but some states go years without fixing problems.
“We’ve been wanting greater oversight,” said Julie Christensen, executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First. “It shouldn’t be the Wild Wild West.”
Federal education officials say that existing oversight mechanisms are leading to improvement. In 2021, 23 states were spending less than the 15 percent required by law. That number dropped to 10 states in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.
Zoe Sullivan, a senior at Collingswood High School who has Down syndrome, had been saying since she was in ninth grade that she wanted to go to a four-year residential college program, but her mother, Kim Brooks, said no one at school really listened.
“I want to go to a college,” said Zoe, sitting at a cafe near her home. “I want to take classes and learn to be independent.”
Last spring, Ms. Brooks found out, very much by accident, about a nonprofit college prep program for students with developmental disabilities — she saw it on a friend’s Instagram post. She has scrambled to submit applications to programs that she and Zoe have found only through word of mouth and hours of research.
“It’s like a secret society,” said Ms. Brooks. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We really missed a lot of years.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education.