With 35,000 new cases of autism diagnosed each year, educators are struggling to prepare for an influx of students with autistic spectrum disorders as class sizes increase and budgets, including funding for special education, are stretched thin.
If public schools are deemed unfit to provide education to autistic students, the costs of private schooling for autistic children rests squarely with them. As demonstrated by the tragic case of Ben Barnhard, an autistic student whose mother killed him and then herself because she’d reportedly given up trying to have him educated properly, many families are ill-equipped to deal with the private schooling costs themselves.
“I think the theme I’m hearing from districts nationwide is, ‘How do we do more with less?’ Let’s not kid ourselves, obviously if you are going to do the right thing, there are costs associated with that, whether it’s staffing or training support,” Pagliaro said.
Pagliaro said technology is a cost-effective alternative, but he added that educating students with special needs is still a costly venture.
“Ninety-five percent of the costs associated with educating children with autism are at the expense of the local public school district,” he said.
He added that some of the seven requirements look daunting, but they can be broken down into manageable steps.
“One-on-one [instruction] doesn’t mean it has to be happening throughout the entire school day. Those times of day when you already know you’re providing one-one-one instruction because a student needs help are great times for the para-educator to do some structured teaching [with a student with autism] around dressing themselves, or washing their hands in the bathroom,” Pagliaro said.
He also spoke about the importance of assessing students individually. Students with autism might be quite advanced in some academic areas, but relatively deficient in others.
- New film fights negative perception of teachers - September 16, 2011
- Textbook-free schools share experiences, insights - September 7, 2011
- Social websites are latest sources for plagiarized material - September 1, 2011
Comments are closed.