Growing number of autistic kids put strains on public schools

North Carolina’s public schools educated 9 percent more autistic children in 2008 than 2007, the Department of Public Instruction has found. The number of students eligible for special services reached 9,755 this year, raising questions about how schools are dealing with an influx of students whose conditions may range from nearly fully functional to more severely disabled.

Autism is a bona fide epidemic, with one out of every 150 children in the United States receiving a diagnosis somewhere on the spectrum, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of those diagnosed are boys. There is still no known single cause of autism or of its rapid growth, according to the Autism Society of America, but it is known the number of diagnoses continue to grow.

“What has changed is how the diagnostics are happening,” said Kim Tizzard, a parent advocate of the Autism Society of North Carolina, Mecklenburg County chapter. “They’re just doing such a better job of identifying different learning disabilities and disorders, and I think that the people using the different tools have gotten better at using those as well.”

Diagnosis tools are used by parents, doctors and very often, educators. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the exceptional children department includes professionals in autism education and support for teachers who work with the growing number of diagnosed students.

Kathy Fallin, who works in the exceptional children’s program for autism in CMS, has been in special education for 32 years. She remembers when schools began issuing the first Individualized Education Plans to students with learning disabilities. Since then, the prevalence of IEPs, and mildly to severely affected students with disabilities, has grown significantly.

In a span of four years, the number of students with autism receiving special education at CMS nearly doubled, from 352 in 2004 to 648 students in 2008.
Nationwide, the number of students with autism spectrum disorders in special education programs from 1994 to 2006 increased from 22,664 to 211,610, according to the CDC.

“I do think we’re doing a much better job of identifying,” she said. “We still have a long way to go in terms of identification tools. A lot of it is still very much subjective, which is scary, but it is improving.”

Funding for the education of these special needs children comes from several sources, according to Claire Greer, a consultant on autism, severe intellectual disabilities and multiple disabilities at DPI. According to information Greer provided, all Local Educational Agencies receive funds from state aid, or $3,387 per child in some districts; state aid preschool funds, which allows schools to receive as much as $54,244 plus $2,862.69 per child; federal funds averaging $1,461 per child in addition to varying amounts per Local Education Agency. There are also additional federal and state funds for which LEAs may apply.

Led by Assistant Superintendent Jane Rhyne, the autism program at CMS has undergone some changes, Fallin explained with help from Anita Lamb, director of administrative services for the exceptional children department.
Perhaps the biggest change has been the move to educated children with disabilities in the same classroom as those without learning issues.

“We started with a pilot group of schools several years ago using Dr. Marilyn Friend’s model of co-teaching,” Fallin said. The idea behind co-teaching is to blend the strengths of general education teachers with those of special education teachers.

“The general education teachers are masters of the content … (and) the special education teachers are masters of strategy,” Lamb said. “If you put the two together, you’re going to be able to meet the need of the classroom. The object … is that students will be taught in the least-restrictive environment.”

The staff also worked with Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to develop teaching, reading, math and science programs that have since been exported across the state.

Another project is based on a device called the classroom tracker. The PDA-like device holds the caseloads of students in self-contained classrooms, or those with only learning-disabled students. A teacher will have access to all her caseloads through the classroom tracker, allowing her to access information about the child, update a caseload as the child makes improvements, and so on.

“In turn, you can utilize and come up with strategies for students. It’s very cutting edge,” Fallin said.

But the biggest resource — teachers — might be in the highest demand. Despite having a high special education-teacher to student ratio, with about 1,000 special education teachers in the system, some parents don’t think CMS does enough to meet the needs of these highly individualistic students.

One mother in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system who spoke on condition of anonymity explained that the biggest problem is a lack of qualified teachers and incentives for training new ones.

CMS offers professional development to any special education teacher who works with autistic students. Offered quarterly, these training modules are open to general education teachers as well. CMS also offers a summer institute and teacher in-service days. But there is no requirement for employees in CMS to undergo special training if they don’t want, meaning that those teachers who do choose to take on the task do so out of their own interest or good will.
Additionally, to receive certain pay-based or other incentives, special education teachers must show that their students achieved the same degree of improvement on standardized tests that is required of general education teachers. Without incentives, many schools depend on pressure from the principal or parents for new special education teachers, said the mother who spoke on condition of anonymity. She said that it’s often the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

That’s where people like Tizzard and her fellow parent advocate, Nancy Popkin, come in. They help parents understand what their rights are and how the schools can help, and also assist the schools in understanding the issues the child with autism faces on a daily basis.

This is helpful to CMS administrators, Fallin said. “I think the wonderful thing about our community is we have so many support groups. We work with them really well,” she said. “We also definitely try to put ourselves in the parents’ shoes and see what they’re going through too. … The majority of times we can work through the situation.”

For those parents who don’t think CMS can meet their child’s educational needs, they often turn to charters or private schools. But with more than 140 speech therapists and about 40 professional and paraprofessional staff members, CMS is often an obvious choice for parents struggling for options — particularly those parents without the financial resources to send their kids to other schools or the time and energy to put up a meaningful fight. The struggle is not lost on Fallin, she said.

“Every day is a new day. You constantly need new strategies and you have to assess where that student is on a new day,” she said. “We are constantly looking at what we’re doing, and each case is individual. Each student is individual.”

Colleen Calvani is a contributor to Carolina Journal.