DOGE abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities. This student is ‘devastated’ — from npr.org by Cory Turner
If you visit the website for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), you’ll find a “Wall of Receipts” listing more than 7,000 federal contracts it has terminated.
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One of these programs, cancelled on Feb. 10, was called Charting My Path for Future Success. It was a research-based effort to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into college or the world of work and self-sufficiency.
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Stepping stones to post-school independence
Charting My Path was built on research that shows students with disabilities who get quality transition services “are more likely to be employed after high school. They’re more likely to be enrolled in post-secondary education, and they’re more likely to identify that they have a higher quality of life,” says Catherine Fowler, a special education researcher at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who has been involved with Charting My Path since 2019, when the contract began.
At the heart of Charting My Path was one of the most promising, research-based services: building students’ self-determination skills by working with them to set goals, then helping create concrete plans to achieve them.
Based on the early results he saw in Newton, John Curley says he was hopeful and calls the decision to cut Charting My Path “a huge mistake. I think investing in students with disabilities is investing in all of us because they’re part of our community, right? They’re our brothers and sisters, our kids, our neighbors, our coworkers.“
From DSC:
If you don’t have a child with special needs, you probably don’t care about this article. But, as with so many things with us human beings, if we know of someone special to us who has disabilities, we suddenly care a lot more. Our youngest daughter fits right into this story. It could have been her pictured in this article. Such programs are needed and it sounded like this study was doing solid work.
How does cutting this program make America great again? It doesn’t. It just makes life more difficult for the 1,600 high school juniors with disabilities that this study was helping (not to mention future students). Their pathways to a productive life just got harder, once again. I dare you to try and go figure out the spaghetti mess of how to get funding and assistance for a special needs youth graduating from high school — and all of the restrictions mentioned therein. And good luck to you if you are that individual and your parents are no longer alive.