
A major issue today in society is how the school system works. Schools face many issues mostly caused by lack of funding and neglect. Often times this is caused by an idea that the most money saving way is the best. This mentality causes much damage to all aspects of school life. Sadly, this has an even more dramatic effect on children with special needs in the school systems today. Many children who are on the Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD have been forgotten by the school systems that were invented to work for them. Families are unknowingly and frequently lied to with misinformation. When schools report any progress children with ASD are making, they are usually providing false information on what is truly going on. The best treatment, for children who are on the Spectrum, is currently unavailable in most schools today and teachers are forced to find, mostly ineffective, alternatives. The faults in the system begin with how the schools currently treat children with ASD and a lack of support, resources, and investments by schools. Autism Spectrum Disorder is handled incorrectly in Schools today and better forms of speech and physical therapy exist and could be made available to these children providing them with the proper care they need for improvement. 

Autism was first officially recorded around 1943 and was thought to be early signs of schizophrenia in children. Later it received its own diagnosis, Autism. Autism is one of many different brain oriented disorders under Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD for short. (Autism Science Foundation) It is usually developed early in the infancy of a child, usually within the first two years of their life. Autism has not been recorded as developing in later stages of life.  Most often ASD affects children’s social and communication skills along with cognitive and reasoning skills while a child is still maturing. (Autism Science Foundation) Most often Autism Spectrum Disorder leaves no physical indication to show a child has ASD. They essentially look just like regular children. Many times children with ASD developed an interest in repetitive activates such as a constant want to re-watch videos or rewind music. (Autism Science Foundation)  

The difficulties caused by ASD make it challenging for these children to communicate and express their ideas, thoughts, and emotions with others around them. This often times leads to behavioral difficulties caused by frustration. Many children with ASD find communicating an extremely challenging task to accomplish. Because Autism Spectrum Disorder is such a large spectrum with varying degrees of severity, it effects each child in a distinctive and unique way. (Autism Science Foundation) For example, some children can have gentler forms of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, which has little effect on the children’s communication ability and mainly affects their social skills. For these children communication is not difficult but they usually are considered introverts by society and do not like to socialize. Often times children with Asperger’s are not placed in special needs schools. Then there are others who suffer from severe Autism being able to speak very little or unable to speak at all. Many times they are unable to process some complicated information that is given to them. Because of the variations of many unique difficulties of each child, helping children with ASD can form many different degrees of individual needs based on the severity with each child’s distinct struggle and requirement that needs to be satisfied for their improvement.  (Autism Science Foundation)

ASD is not a disorder that affects a single demographic of people. Anyone regardless of gender and ethnicity can be effected by ASD. There is no cure for ASD, only therapy oriented to a child’s particular need can bring forth positive results to social and communication skills. (Moore) Many scientists have tried to find a cause for ASD but none have presented any concrete results, with any results that do come forward being lies or misinformation. As it stands no real cause can be identified. Because there is no known cause for ASD many concerns arise. The increasing number of children being diagnosed with ASD is one such concern. Compared to past years the numbers show a rather extreme fluctuation. (Moore) Today one in sixty-eight children in the United States is diagnosed with ASD. This is a massive increase compared to the Nineties where it was one in twenty-five hundred children were diagnosed with ASD. The increase in ASD has begun to remain relatively constant but the chance of another increase is unknown and causes much uneasiness. ASD remains a growing problem and with no cause in sight it becomes evident why a cure most be found. Sadly, no cure for ASD has been found, yet there are still very effective resources currently available to help children who have ASD develop proper social, communication, and reasoning skills (Autism Science Foundation). 

The increase of children with ASD should bring forth much concern. A larger amount of effort should be put into effect in classrooms along with adequate accommodations into schools, to properly help these children receive the care and therapy that they need for their betterment. Since the number of children with ASD is increasing many would think that the way schools handle ASD would take top priority, sadly, this is not the reality that exists in today’s school system. There are many issues in the school system for children with ASD. (Pellecchia) The main problem schools have for treating children with ASD is a common problem almost all schools face, a lack of funding. This trickles down and affects directly effects almost every other issue. Because money is needed to operate the special needs programs in schools, this is one of the most significant problem causing factors the school system faces for helping children with ASD. The lack of funds causes important resources and crucial staff to be at a bare minimum, which in turn is the reason many schools handle ASD incorrectly and inefficiently. (Pellecchia) Often times teachers who work with children under Spectrum are often forgotten by the school system and left alone with only a handful of staff to operate large classrooms. Because of the specific needs of each child one teacher and a couple of assistants cannot properly accommodate a classroom ranging from fifteen to twenty kids who each have specific need. (Locke) 

The majority of schools follow the same principle for handling children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The children with ASD are placed in the same classroom and are isolated from other “normal” childern. Older kids affected by ASD are treated as grade school children forced to do insignificant “busy work”. (Kasari) The work most of these children do in class consist of reading children’s books, doing basic math, such as addition and subtractions, and are taught simple chores such as cleaning dishes. Some who are on the less severe end of the Spectrum are trained to do some sort of labor job that such as a dish-wash or busboy. (Kasari) This current system is a complete waste of the children’s and teacher’s time and resources. In most cases the school system essential works as a glorified day care center for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The main issue that most children with ASD have are communication difficulties and hardships when expressing their emotions to others.(Kasari) Because the current system tries to help each child in the same way disregarding their individual needs, also each child may have differing levels of communication needs creating more chaos. Almost all the children with ASD are receiving ineffective lessons in schools which only have negative repercussions on the students, and are a complete waste of time.(Kasari) Many of kids with ASD are incredibly intelligent and have amazing talents and skills. Some are master musicians, while others are mathematical wizards. But by forcing them to do unproductive work and waste their days, schools systems force these talents to go to waste. (Kasari) For example, some of the children with ASD can perfectly understand the what others are trying to say to them but they simply cannot convey their thought to words correctly. What children under this part of the Spectrum require is therapy focused on developing speech, rather than waste time doing grade school work that has no effect on their speech abilities. (Moore) My brother is one such example of this issue. My younger brother is on the Autism Spectrum Disorder. He can perfectly understand me and understands what I ask him to do. The difficulty my brother faces is that he is unable to communicate with me properly and has much difficulty forming sentences and pronouncing words. The type of therapy that should be focused on him is intensive speech therapy where they concentration on helping him develop skills to be able to pronounce words, understand vocabulary, and create sentences. It is this type of focused, individualized, and goal oriented school mentality that should be implemented in each school for each child. 

Schools often find themselves understaff in the roles of teachers and assistants for classrooms with children who are on the Spectrum. Because of the rising amount of children with ASD and a small staff it is easy to see why the children are all placed together. It appears to make the work load easier and the idea is that a couple of teachers can properly accommodate the children. (Pellecchia) Children with mild autism and severe autism are clustered together. This has some bad side effects mainly children with mild autism are forced to do work that is of no use to them. They are essentially brought down to lower level work that they have no business doing. This unnecessary work causes them to slowdown and not reach their true potential with the talents they possess. They may also pick up bad habits from students who are on the more severe end of the spectrum which will only further hinder their development. (Pellecchia) Teachers who are currently working in the schools to help children with ASD are not the ones to blame. From my experience they are very passionate about helping children with Autism and wish to see them mature and receive the proper care that they need. They simply are unable to do all of the work load alone with the limited resources they have available for use. Some ways to help the teachers who are currently in the system is by providing more staff and funds into the programs. (Pellecchia) The most useful tool any teacher who is working in a ASD program in school needs it more staff. Staff is the most important tool because each child has a unique need and one teacher cannot successful accommodate everyone. Another incredibly important tools that schools should incorporate are the uses of more therapist into schools. One on one intensive therapy has proven to be the most successful way to help children with ASD. (Babble) Unfortunately, therapists and therapy seasons are by no means cheap. Professionals are needed for these roles and because of low funds schools many times do not have specialized therapists to help these children. (Pellecchia) The uses of therapists are usually left to induvial families who may or may not be able to afford it. 

Many schools have tried to change for the better by using computers programs to help teacher lighten the work load. Though there is much potential in the use of computer in schools’ programs, they should not use them at the main substitute for one on one therapies with actual people. The use of computers would only teach children under the Spectrum to operate and interact with computers not people. Though there are some good opportunities that could come with the uses of computers it should not be the replacement of human teachers. (Pellecchia) From my own personal experience my younger brother’s learning output was incredibly increased when my family decided to invest more time in one on one therapy sessions than time wasted in the current school environment. My family has the benefit of being financially stable, this is sadly not the case for many families who have children with ASD. Because therapy seasons can be costly, many families only option to help their children is the current system implanted into school which can have no effect in the child’s betterment. 

Some would suggest that the current system works fine. The strongest reasoning behind this is that the current system costs the least amount money and resources. They believe that the system currently is providing the children with ASD the care they need at a minimal cost. (Chen) By placing the children in one homeroom with one teacher and a couple of assistants some would suggest that this would be a decent replication of the current system for “normal” children. By giving children with ASD the same environment that those regular children currently have available to them, some believe that the needs of ASD children is being accomplished. (Chen) The thought process behind this, is that by mimicking other classrooms these children will have the best learning outcomes and bring forth positive results. (Chen) This is not the truth of the matter. The separation of ASD children from their peers has drastic consequences with the children. The children learn only to interact with children with ASD and this can have dramatic effects, especial on children who are on the less severe side of the Spectrum. The current system is just ineffective in helping produce positive results to children with ASD. 

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a growing issue not just in the United States but also in every other country. More and more kids are being diagnosed with ASD every year. No cause for ASD has yet been identified and no cure excites for ASD. Because of this the way Autism Spectrum Disorder is treated in schools should be reevaluated. Children are currently not receiving the proper care the deserve and need. More resources need to be placed into special needs programs to help children who are under the Spectrum develop the communication and social skills they are lacking. In addition to more resources being added, more staff needs to be placed into these programs. Many ASD children require shadows and so often there is not man power to help meet this need. Along with more man power, more specialized therapy sessions need to be implement to the children’s daily lives. The current system is faulty and requires some reevaluation and much modification. It is important to remember that children ASD are still children, they just require some extra help. The current system does little to nothing to help these children. It is the duty of all of humanity to help those in need, therefore it is our duty to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
