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How Schools and Districts are Improving the Performance of Special Education Students

The National Center for Learning Disabilities' newest report, Challenging Change: How Schools and Districts are Improving the Performance of Special Education Students, highlights how two schools and three school districts from around the nation are working to dramatically improve the academic achievement of their special education students.

This knowledge path about caring for children and youth with special health care needs has been compiled by the Maternal and Child Health Library at Georgetown University. It offers a selection of current, high-quality resources that analyze data, describe effective programs, and report on policy and research aimed at developing systems of care that are family-centered, community-based, coordinated, and culturally competent. A separate section lists resources for families. The final part of the knowledge path presents resources that address specific aspects of care and development, such as advocacy, early intervention and education, financing services, rehabilitation, screening, and transition. This knowledge path for health professionals, program administrators, policymakers, educators, researchers, and families will be updated periodically.

Overwhelmingly, these studies have not found evidence for a causal relationship between either thimerosal or the MMR vaccine and autism. At the same time, some parents have reported that the appearance of autism symptoms coincided with vaccination, and thus have advocated for more research on the potential role of vaccines in autism. As an organization that is committed to understanding all the potential causes of autism, we cannot dismiss the concerns of parents, especially since autism may be caused by distinct combinations of genetic and environmental factors that may each account for only a small percent of overall cases.

Most children who get hurt at school can tell their parents what happened, but what about those who cannot? Twelve-year-old Carmen Maggiore is autistic and cannot communicate verbally, so when his mother, Linda Auger, noticed deep purple bruises on her son's arms and abrasions on his upper chest, lower back, and buttocks, she couldn't ask him to tell her what happened. Auger, who lives in Braintree, Mass., believes her son suffered what many parents dread: abuse at the hands of his former teacher, an adult Auger trusted with Carmen's well-being and education. The teacher has said no such abuse took place. It's an example of the difficult circumstances that parents and schools face when trying to sort out whether abuse occurred in a classroom.

Autism is just as common in adults as it is in children, a new British government study says. In recent years much attention has been focused on a perceived increase in autism rates among children, but in a study of more than 4,000 British households that country’s top health agency found that autism appeared in similar rates in adults and children.