Does More Autism in the Classroom Mean We're in the Midst of an Epidemic?
Actually, the answer to that question is "no."
< When I was a kid, there were no kids with autism in my class. Nor were there kids with deafness, learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, down syndrome or spina bifida. In fact, there were no kids with significant differences or disabilities in any mainstream classroom.
That's not because deafness, CP, and so forth were unheard of. It's because the law did not encourage or require any type of inclusion. As a result, children with differences and disabilities were placed in special classrooms and school, sequestered from typically developing peers. Occasionally we'd see a group of "special" kids trooping down the hall -- but we were never encouraged to interact with them in any way.
Then came the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) in the early 1990's. The IDEA requires that schools offer a free and appropriate education (FAPE) in the least restrictive environment (LRE). The IDEA meant that kids with all sorts of problems were now to be educated -- if at all possible -- in the general education classroom with their typical peers.
At first, it was only kids with near-normal abilities whose settings changed. But soon parents became more sophisticated in their understanding of special education law, the Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and the rights of disabled individuals.
In the last ten years or so, many more parents have pushed much harder to have their children with disabilities (especially autism) included in general education classrooms. And they've succeeded. Many kids with mild to profound autism (and other disorders such as Tourette's Syndrome, ADHD, etc.) are in typical classrooms. Sometimes they're accompanied by aides, sometimes they are only partially included, and sometimes general education teachers are expected to just "make it work."
Overall, there's no doubt that there's more autism in the classroom. There's also more... Tourettes, ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, you name it. Does that mean we're including more kids with learning and behavior problems? Does it mean we have a cultural need to enforce a "happy medium?" Does it mean the laws and diagnostic criteria have changed? Does it mean that parents are more aware of educational law and more willing to push for adherence to the letter of the law?
The answer to these and other questions is almost certainly yes.
Comments
No one can base how many kids with autism being in inclusion is an epidemic. When I was in school, there was one mentally impaired boy who was semi mainstreamed into some classes w/o a Para, and that would had been rare for that time period. Prior to IDEA, in most schools you wouldn’t see those disabled kids since we were living in a era of hiding them. It’s also hard to determine how many with autism were actually misdiagnosed. Once IDEA added autism, you can look at any school IEP records and see the listing of MR dropped as autism rose. Autism was always there. In schools today, what parent hasn’t had a placement fight with the school? Some parents want classes only with peers who also have autism, so those kids don’t even count in that school ‘observed epidemic’.
Long before the vaccine autism theory, in the 70’s there was an ADHD Large increase in schools. The numbers of kids on meds was enormous. It so happened to coincide with the public schools start of the budget crunch and larger classes, but it’s really hard to say if those children were truly ADHD or maybe autism spectrum or a combo of both. My own kid can appear ADHD providing there are too many faces about him.
What is interesting is when people compare rates and medical issues per the public school, which is a poor place to start.
Reinforcing your premise. Us Asperger’s people were often in that classroom too; Asperger’s wasn’t recognized in the US until after 1994. My oldest/most geeky son had problems in school prior to 1994, and one shrink felt he was schizophrenic and a danger to society who should be incarcerated. I felt uncomfortable with that diagnosis, especially since my son wasn’t significantly different than I or my brothers. Another shrink told me he was harmless, he had seen odd kids like him before, just keep him busy with complex hobbies. We got involved in scouts and 4H to keep him busy. The school wanted to expel him because of his fetish for sharps. They completely changed their tune when we pointed out that if he REQUIRED some kind of special education because of “psychiatric” problems, that the school system would be responsible for paying the bill. They changed their mind.
We were in the classroom all along, I’m sure you must have noticed us, we were the kids being constantly bullied by other children, and humiliated by teachers when we didn’t understand directions.
Also, currently, public schools have a different criteria per state and some kids with a diagnosis of whatever don’t qualify for an IEP. Some have 504’s and those are not counted in those autism rates at all. Some public schools, such as where I live, do not require a medical diagnosis in order to qualify for an autism IEP- just because a child has an IEP but not a medical diagnosis does not mean the child has a medical disability at all.
Then if you consider Bill’s post, how about the many many adults who were missed in the school system? Or those adults with a diagnosis no longer in the school system? Those rates are no longer in the count.
Autism at different levels (being a spectrum) has always been there. Prior to our kids being diagnosed, we probably looked at those kids in stores having behavior issues and never considered it being autism. Once your child is diagnosed and you start to look around, it would appear autism is every where and this only happened because we were actually ‘looking’.
One would think people could leave comments without name calling-
This subject is always an on-going topic within the autism community. It has to do with autism rates and so many people are basing rates on what they see in schools and the IEP’s generated by the schools (which is where those national rates comes from).
I think this is a topic that Lisa laid out very well and I believe it’s generated from the previous topic.
Thanks for the lucid post, Lisa. The “autism epidemic” is assumed by the anti-vax community, and anyone who dares question it is attacked for being hopelessly out of touch.
I was a kid with Asperger’s, undiagnosed, growing up. I was the quiet one, a blond haired, blue eyed little girl who was so afraid of getting in trouble that I never spoke, yet I got after school detention for not understanding my homework well enough to finish it. My grades where A’s when I understood something and F’s when I didn’t because I didn’t know how to ask that material be explained more clearly. I was picked on by every girl in the class except one (conversely, most of the boys were nice to me, so I still have more friends who are men.) I remember getting compliments from my teachers on the originality of my written essays as young as age 10 – yet being called slow by teachers in other circumstances. In grade school, only one teacher every understood me, my 4th grade teacher saying “when I say something to the whole class, she doesn’t look like she knows I’m also including her” to my mother. I was afraid of answering if the teacher might not have been talking to me too. I was used to being excluded. (Now, in grad school, I figured out how to ask questions and I’m making strait A’s.)
My daughter is autistic and included in classrooms at her middle school. She still stands out, and she doesn’t want to. She’s beautiful and she wants to be less so, to keep other kids from seeing her. All the teachers like her, and some of the kids are very kind because they’ve been taught not to bully. Kids have to be taught that, if encouraged to bully – they will. In my generation, kids did win approval by bullying, but one of the lines separating a good school from a bad school (from the perspective of a parent with a ’special needs kid’) is how the school deals with bullying. The worst school I ever attended as a child was a religious school that was supposed to be superior academically, the reason it was terrible was the bullying was far worse.
Thinking back, some of the kids I liked best in different schools that I went to probably had ‘disabilities’ of their own. In each new school (we moved a lot) I tended to make friends with whoever it was who didn’t have friends already, whoever it was that got picked on. I was always very keen on deciding who to love – some of the ones who mattered to me most were probably also jumping through hoops to fit in socially, and that’s probably where we had common ground. They’ve now grown up, and those I’ve reconnected with have grown into interesting and wonderful adults. I’m proud of them when I hear the diverse and unique careers they have chosen.
Thank you. I popped across from ‘dear noah’ who pointed this one out.
Cheers