Charting My Path

If you go to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website, you’ll see a “Wall of Receipts” that lists over 7,000 federal contracts that it has terminated. Aside from the “savings” from each cancellation, there is no context supplied, making it difficult to evaluate the cost or collateral effect of all these cuts. However, for some families, there was a cost. One of these programs, called Charting My Path for Future Success, was terminated on February 10. It was a research-based attempt to assist students with disabilities in navigating the sometimes challenging transition from high school to college or the world of work.

For three weeks, beginning in January, 1,600 high school juniors from 13 school districts around the country participated in the program, including those in Virginia, Arizona, and Georgia. Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the US Education Department, told NPR in a statement that Charting My Path was a research project “with questionable implementation” and that too much of the program’s $43 million cost, according to DOGE’s accounting, went to contractors rather than students. However, some of the program’s closest supporters – families, educators, and researchers – believe Charting My Path might have helped millions of vulnerable teenagers.

Jessie Damroth was grateful that her 17-year-old son’s school system in Newton, Mass., was helping to pilot the initiative, until she found that it had been abruptly terminated. “I cried all day,” she admits. Damroth’s son, Logan, is a junior at Newton South High School. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and drinks his morning coffee from a big, powder blue mug imprinted with the word “Imagination” and a boyhood favorite: SpongeBob SquarePants.

Logan enjoys physics and wants to go to college. He wants to help people like himself and his family. Logan, his younger sister, and his mother all have a variety of conditions caused by a variant in the TANC2 gene. 

According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, TANC2-related disorders cause a wide range of symptoms, the majority of which impact neurodevelopment. These include developmental delays, intellectual disability, autism, seizures, and behavioral challenges. Individuals may also experience delays in motor and verbal development, sleep issues, and gastrointestinal disorders such as chronic constipation. Some people may also have unique facial features and connective tissue anomalies.

Logan is looking forward to the future. However, preparing for that future would be difficult without further assistance. Logan occasionally misses school to attend difficult-to-schedule appointments with medical specialists. And while he is in class, he can become so fatigued that he falls asleep. 

“[Logan] is fully capable of having a wonderful career, a family if he wants. The sky’s the limit,” says Damroth, adding, “if he has the right supports.” Damroth soon enrolled her son in Charting My Path, a new research study that provided a variety of intense supports. Logan began to change not long after starting the program, she says.

Leaving high school sometimes feels like falling off a cliff for young adults with disabilities, according to John Curley, a special educator at Logan’s school who worked on Charting My Path. “We try so hard, as best we can, to build a parachute for individuals and families so that it’s a little bit of a more graceful fall,” Curley says. “That’s what I loved about [Charting My Path].”

According to Karrie Shogren, a researcher behind Charting My Path and a professor of special education at the University of Kansas, schools are still eager to learn “what works best” in transition planning and provides the greatest return on investment for students, schools, and taxpayers. That was the purpose of Charting My Path. The study divided 1,600 high school juniors with disabilities into three groups.

A control group received only the districts’ pre-existing transition supports, which are required by federal law. The second group received those basic services in addition to attending a Charting My Path session with its research-based curriculum multiple times per week. 

They discussed their hobbies and goals and worked in small groups on goal-setting with a highly qualified instructor who would also contact students’ families on occasion. These additional employees were paid because of a federal contract. According to John Curley, the concept of Charting My Path was particularly appealing to students. 

Typically, teachers tell teenagers what to do at school.  However, with Charting My Path, students led and adults followed. The third group received the most assistance: all of the services provided by the first and second groups, as well as one-on-one mentoring for the duration of their junior and senior years, as well as even more frequent family check ins. Logan belonged to this group.

Furthermore, the services would remain until graduation. The Charting My Path research would collect data until at least 2028 to determine whether the services had a long-term impact. Charting My Path was developed based on research that shows disabled students who receive 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.

One of the most promising, research-based services was at the heart of Charting My Path: helping students develop self-determination abilities by assisting them in setting objectives and creating realistic plans to attain them. A PowerPoint presentation made by one of the Charting My Path districts following the program’s end (and shared with NPR) demonstrates the surprising diversity of the student’s ambitions.

One student wanted to submit their application for welding school. Another wanted to become a chef and work with their father. Other students had goals that were related to daily life, including doing their laundry and using a microwave.

According to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) transition planning must begin when a student on an IEP reaches the age of sixteen. In my home state Massachusetts, this process must begin at the age of fourteen. 

When I reached the age of fourteen, the process began to take shape. I did not know what to expect. My IEP team began to discuss their vision for my future. I had always known that I wanted to pursue postsecondary education of some kind. I was unsure of what my future was going to look like.

Disabled people should have the opportunity to explore careers and figure out the transition to adulthood, whatever that may look like. Charting My Path sounds like it was very helpful for students like Logan. It saddens me that the program is no longer available to students.

Sources:

Lee, Andrew M.I. “What Is Iep Transition Planning?” Understood, Understood, 27 May 2021, www.understood.org/articles/en/iep-transition-planning-preparing-for-young-adulthood. 

“Secondary Transition.” Mass.gov, Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, http://www.mass.gov/service-details/secondary-transition. 

“TANC2-Related Disorders – Symptoms, Causes, Treatment.” National Organization for Rare Disorders, National Organization for Rare Disorders, 11 June 2023, rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/tanc2-related-disorders/. 

Turner, Cory. “Doge Abruptly Cut a Program for Teens with Disabilities. This Student Is ‘Devastated.’” NPR, NPR, 14 Apr. 2025, www.npr.org/2025/04/14/nx-s1-5345870/trump-doge-students-disabilities?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=nprnews.