What schools and parents can do to support kids with autism
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As the public education system attempts to catch up to the growing number of school-age children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), parents must take an active and forceful role in advocating for their children.
That was one finding from a study published recently in the Early Childhood Education Journal and co-published by Juliet Hart Barnett, a professor of special education in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University, Erin Rotheram-Fuller, a Mary Lou Fulton College professor, and Jesse Fleming, an assistant professor in the college.
“We have to educate parents and let them know they have a right to assert their view, and their views are supposed to hold equal weight in the education decisions being made about their children,” said Barnett, who is being honored with a Distinguished Researcher Award for 2026 in Special Inclusive Education Research from the American Educational Research Association.
ASU News talked to Barnett about the study, why the percentage of school-age children diagnosed with ASD is growing rapidly and how the public school system in the United States can learn from what Ireland is doing to educate children with ASD.
Note: Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Question: What was the impetus for the study?
Answer: What was published was actually a subset of a broader study where we had the opportunity to partner with the Republic of Ireland and Dublin City University. We had a team that we worked with there that had keen interest in the experiences of children on both sides of the pond, and they were noticing an increase in autistic-specific classrooms. We wanted to learn more about those settings in general: Why parents are choosing them, what their children are being afforded in those settings, what is it they think is working in those settings? So, we conducted this broader study where we looked at those questions across a number of different school settings that were serving kids with autism.
Q: What did you find in these autistic-specific classrooms that was effective in educating children with ASD?
A: There were very specific conditions that need to be present in order for children with autism to succeed. First and foremost, one of the things we found was how much parents and families had to advocate in order to get their children’s services. Not even the idea of advocating for a less restrictive setting, but even advocating that schools provide special services for their children with autism. So advocacy was a big component. Also, what we saw was a lot of attention to sensory and emotional regulation. Children with autism very much present with sensory processing challenges. They’re easily overwhelmed. They can get unregulated very quickly. One of the things we noticed immediately was a lot of attention to techniques that are intended to help reduce that anxiety and tension. Lots of opportunities for calming environments, for working with occupational therapists who have the expertise to come in and provide those regulatory techniques and services. So we saw a lot of what we call sensory-supportive environments, with reduced noise and chaos.
Q: Were there fewer students in these classrooms?
A: Yes. These classes tended to have six to 12 students … because these kids really can’t learn if their environment is overwhelming their nervous system. That just isn’t a functional environment for them.
Q: How can the American education system incorporate some of the teaching methods in these Ireland classrooms?
A: The extent around which these can be fully implemented in a larger general education setting is interesting. We have a tension in our field about whether you can really accomplish that individualization. Currently, there’s research going on in the Vail School District here in Arizona because they very much have an agenda around inclusive practice, and they are including these children in the general educational setting. We’ll be able to evaluate how well these kinds of approaches can be implemented.
Q: Just how prevalent is ASD among school-age children?
A: A few years ago, it was 1 in 54 and now, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are at 1 in 31. A couple of decades ago, we were at 1 in 10,000.
Q: Why the huge jump?
A: We have some hypotheses, but we really don’t know. We’ve had a change in the definition from the diagnostic and statistical manual. We used to identify higher functioning autism without the communication barriers as something we call Asperger’s syndrome. So when the definition changed and that category was removed, all the children are identified with the same label of autism. There’s also perhaps less stigmatization around an autism label versus some other disability label. Also, I think it is unfair to suggest that there may not be some other environmental factor that we haven’t identified yet.
Q: Is the public school system in the United States progressing in terms of its educational opportunities for children with ASD?
A: The prevalence rate has increased much more quickly than our education systems are prepared to respond, and much more quickly than our teacher preparation programs have been prepared to equip the educators going into the field. A couple of things that ASU, and specifically the (Mary Lou Fulton College), is doing that I think are moves in the right direction is we’ve created a minor in our education program around applied behavior analysis, which is the premier sort of approach to working with children with autism. We also have two master’s programs, one in autism and one in applied behavior analysis, that are very well regarded.
Q: Given that, how can parents be the best advocates for their children?
A: That’s a crucial question. Historically, we often have noted through research that families are frequently the recipients of the school’s decisions. They don’t know how to navigate these settings. They don’t know what their rights are. So the first thing I would suggest is for families to try to educate themselves as much as possible. Because once you know what your rights are, you’re able to go into the school and advocate much better for the services for your child. But it’s also incumbent upon schools to understand where families are coming from. They’re coming from a place of being disenfranchised. Their children have not potentially gotten services that they’ve needed up to this point. So schools have to understand the position that families are in and understand that parents are co-constructors of the education plans. Schools have a responsibility to engage parents, draw them in and give them parity. We have to start listening and acting on what families tell us.
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