Job Training Exists for Students With Disabilities. Many Never Get It.

 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.

Job Training Exists for Students With Disabilities. Many Never Get It. - The New York Times