The sense of urgency within the public school system to identify students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) for targeted intervention has been sparked by the increased prevalence estimates of these disorders. Although there are a number of uncertainties regarding the recent increase in ASD prevalence rates, the educational personnel have a higher chance of meeting autism cases. Therefore, there is an increased need for comprehensive evaluation techniques in schools. The basic focus of this article is to outline the need for a diagnostic procedure for identifying ASD in public schools.
The authors give an overview of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as a guideline for providing appropriate special education services for children. Therefore, the public school administrators and educators are endowed with the responsibility of screening children with ASD. In spite of this responsibility, the school personnel have to receive adequate training and supervision concerning ASD due to its heterogeneous nature. There are a number of legal and clinical issues in diagnosing children afflicted with ASD. Since 1975, the passing and modification of several federal laws has occurred to ensure that the students with disabilities get access to appropriate educational services. These federal laws include Public Law (P.L) 94-142, and FAPE. In 1990, the further modification of P.L 94-142 took place and it was given a new title as IDEA. The term “autism” and its meaning were accorded official recognition. In 1997, a significant number of other amendments were again made to the IDEA.
Qualified medical professionals, as stated by the Local Educational Agency (LEA), do appropriate evaluations to determine ASD. The process of retrieving all related information should take place without any discrimination. The Individualized Education Program (IEP) is an important document that outlines the requirements of any child with disability and how the educational personnel are to cater for those requirements. The IDEA ‘97 gives a “provision for the dissemination of information to parents concerning procedural safeguards” (Noland and Gabriels, 2004, p. 267). The document also gives ways of resolving disputes. In the past, a number of litigation cases have occurred that focused on appropriate identification and development of educational services for students with ASDs. However, in most cases school districts have lost because of either procedural mistakes or mistakes concerning the substance, or the content of the IEP.
IDEA ’97, being a federal law, ought to be interpreted and endorsed by every state. However, states vary in the way they choose to interpret the document, organize disability groups and provide the victims with appropriate services. Therefore, services are provided differently in every state as well as between school districts in the same state. The difference in states interpretation of IDEA ’97 may be confusing to educational services providers. This may lead to the problem of states variability in autism identification rates.
There are a number of clinical issues involved in screening and identification of kids suffering from ASD in the school system. The educational diagnosis of ASD according to the IDEA ’97 as unique in every state interpretation and the clinical diagnosis given by medical professionals according to DSM-IV are not the same. The term ASD is usually used to refer to the broad category of behaviorally defined disorders called the Pervasive Developmental Disorders by the DSM-IV. These conditions show complex and different symptoms together with multiple etiologies. Children afflicted with autism often show varied symptoms that interrupts their social interaction, proper communication, and behavior. Studies have shown that the condition is caused by interaction of multiple genes. This is because other genetic disorders have overlapping symptoms with it and its symptoms are heterogeneous. Therefore, its nature is complex.
Educational identification of ASD does not give an exacting label; rather it sheds more light on the child’s eligibility and requirements for services under an educational disability category. The criteria then develop services to meet the child’s requirements. However, this calls for training and supervision to enable the school personnel to diagnose ASD correctly. The complicated nature of diagnosing ASD needs a systematic approach to screening, assessment, and diagnosis. Therefore, there is a need for proper interpretation of autism-specific screening and assessment standards to facilitate the targeting of interventions to students in the public school system. These standards have been developed and refined over the duration of time.
A number of factors should be considered when developing a school-based ASD screening process. For the provision of quick intervention services, the school system should be located near a large metropolitan area. This will reduce loss of valuable intervention time and thus enable quick response from health professionals to get an accurate diagnosis of ASD. Adequate availability of resources is necessary to assist in the development of multidisciplinary evaluation teams (AST), purchasing of training facilities and meeting other assorted expenses. A licensed clinical psychologist should also be available on site. The LAST team should make a screening referral process to explain the duties of every member of the team. The School-based AST referral and assessment process model consists of seven steps for carrying out the intervention strategy.
The increasing incidence rates of ASD among children have triggered the need of developing competent skills of identifying the disorders among students in schools. The model of screening and assessment service delivery by the AST team is an important strategy that needs to be embraced by school districts across the country. It is an effective way of making a diagnosis of children suspected of having ASD. The confusion in the diagnosis of ASD can be reduced by having a school-based cooperative team development project. Therefore, this leads to improved services for children with ASD.
The research problem of this article is coherent with its title, which give the impression that it is of educational importance. However, the research problem is not very evident to the average reader since it needs a number of repeated readings to understand why the authors wanted to undertake the research. I think it was restricted to the abilities and resources the authors had. Even though the authors are successful in giving several details and relevant historical information in the article, they give a cursory explanation on the procedure for outlining school-based ASD screening process since there is insufficient historical data to support it.
The page format of the article would have been improved by increasing the number of paragraph breaks. This would have enhanced the understanding of the material since reading it would be much easier. The format employed in listing references is coherent and all in-text references are given for all the outside sources cited. The findings that this journal gives are well researched, scholarly written and well organized. However, it falls short of giving adequate literature review to develop the situation of the increase in prevalence rates of ASD. The journal gets a little bit complex in outlining the district referral and screening process due to the complexity of the presentation method used. The authors give a solid conclusion for the article founded on the findings that are logically stated. In general, this journal is very interesting and it is an important contribution to the development of appropriate screening and identification procedures for children with ASD.
Reference
Noland, R. M., & Gabriels, R. L. (2004). Screening and Identifying Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in the Public School System: The Development of a Model Process. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34 (3), 265-277.