Autism Vox

Autism’s Not Invisible in New Jersey

by Kristina Chew, PhD on February 24th, 2008

Just over a year ago, the CDC reported that the prevalence rate for autism was 1 in 150 among children in the US; New Jersey’s rate—1 in 94— was the highest. On seeing such numbers, some have quickly concluded there must be an epidemic of autism in Jersey, and cited the state’s longstanding (if exaggerated, sometimes to mythic proportions) reputation as a toxic dumping ground for chemical waste and all manner of environmentally suspicious substances. It’s not exactly roses and geraniums in the wrongly named “Garden State,” and no wonder the autism rate is so high, the (sneering) accusations go.

In a recent post, a Grey Matter/White Matter presents a first look at New Jersey autism numbers by analyzing the total number of students in special education with the autism code for eligibility. In 2002, there were 4161 children with this code; in 2007, 8806 (see graph). Grey Matter/White Matter notes that these figures include data on placements, which offer “an indication–admittedly a very rough estimation–of the ’severity’ [a term that Grey Matter/White Matter uses with hesitation] of the autism that is driving the increase”—-and what the data show are that the biggest increases in students classified with the autism code are for students who are spending time in regular ed classroom (see graph). There are significant increases for more restrictive placements including “the fairly restrictive ‘Private Day’ and ‘Pub[lic] Separate’ placements,” and very small increases in the “Private Residential” and “Home Instruction” categories (see graph). Grey Matter/White Matter concludes:

these first indications are that the increase the educational autism count is mostly due to students who are spending some or all of their time in regular classrooms. The idea that the increased autism count is an indication of an “epidemic” of kids with “classic” autism isn’t supported by the placements.

I live in New Jersey. My husband Jim is a native. While Charlie has lived here for most of his life, he was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and came to New Jersey when he was four years old). Our school district has a lot of autistic students and some have moved into the town specifically for the services (this includes us, though we also moved for a personal reason: while my husband did not grow up in the town where we now live, his parents have lived here for over 30 years and we used to live with them, to assist in taking care of them).

Students classified as autistic in our town fall under the range of placements that Grey Matter/White Matter, with lots of children in preschool. Some of these children will move on to “least restrictive placements” and some will remain in those that are “more restrictive”; my own son is in a “Public Separate” placement. There are a couple of classrooms with preschool-aged autistic children and one at the Intermediate level (this is my son’s classroom, and one student is from out of the district) and one at the Middle School level. The district is planning to create a High School level classroom—there are high school-age students who will need a lot more services and will not be mainstreamed, and they are currently in a general special ed classroom with a vocational emphasis. There are also other autistic high school students who are mainstreamed.

The students who have what is called “severe” or “classic” autism (though these terms are themselves in need of revising, as comments on the Grey Matter/White Matter post point out) are only a percentage of all the students in our district with an autism classification. My son does fall under this sort of classification—-when my son was preschool age, we knew that he had less language and seemed to struggle more with academic programs than many of the other children. At that point, no one was inclined, or comfortable, about talking about how “severe” he might be or if he would be able to attend classes with his same-aged peers, with an aide. We hoped that he would, and then every year I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach as another mother mentioned that her son, who was younger than Charlie, was spending half a day in a kindergarten classroom. Another mother—who had just noted that her son was going into first grade— was so surprised when I told her that Charlie was staying in a self-contained autism classroom that, after saying “oh,” she gulped and said “well, good luck.” A child of Charlie’s “severity,” administrators once told us, could not be educated in the district, and would have to be “sent out.”

So I’m very glad that Charlie can currently be educated in-district and that our town’s program is good enough that parents want their children to be in it, and might even prefer it to a private autism school. Being educated in-district means that he is not invisible to the children his age, or to the community—-that he’s one among the many autistic students and individuals in our town and in the state. An article in today’s Sunday Herald reveals that there are some 35,000 adults with autism in Scotland, though they are “‘invisible’ to local authorities, who are failing to record the number of people with autism in their area.” I have to wonder at how many autistic adults there are here in Jersey; we know more than a few persons, including some old friends of my husband, single and in relationships, more interested in playing chess than going to the lunchroom, with an official diagnosis and without. Yes, there’s a lot of students classified as autistic here in New Jersey, there’s a lot of autism in New Jersey—-and that’s not for worse, but for better.

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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Education, New Jersey, Statistics