Friday, February 23, 2007

Clinic Notes: Special Education and Autism Stats

According to some reports we are in the midst of an autism epidemic with one out of every 150 children diagnosed. At the same time the number of children diagnosed with learning disabilities or mental retardation is declining. Now we hear that for the first time in history the number of children in Special Education declined by 2.4%. (http://tinyurl.com/yuh59z) Furthermore, the number of children age 3-5 entering public education with speech/language impairments dropped 5%.
So what's happening? Are the speech/language impaired kids, which make up half of the kids with disabilities, now being diagnosed with autism and going into private autism schools where they can get more ABA? I'm confused