Schools Are Killing My Son’s Autism Support Under the Veil of Equity

On March 19, 2024, parents representing elementary school children with autism sat patiently while the superintendent of education eloquently described the strengths neurodiversity brings to education and the Montgomery County, Maryland Board of Education’s (BOE) enduring support for Autism Awareness Month.

Yet, only months prior, the BOE decided to terminate a program designed for children with autism and parents were waiting to give testimony urging them to reverse it.

Even wealthy counties, like Montgomery County, are not impervious to program cuts for children with disabilities, even when they manage billions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

Previously, my son, Zen, attended a charter school in Washington, DC, where he was considered a lost cause.

The school prided itself on inclusion; yet we would receive phone calls to pick him up because he “escaped”, hit other kids and adults, and would obsess over the elevator—even with a dedicated aide.

In fact, during one IEP meeting, each of his teachers and providers detailed how he was a threat to himself and to others. Zen was unteachable. Despite assessments demonstrating he had above-average intelligence, the school was convinced that he was unable to learn.

We moved to Montgomery County when Zen was in 1st grade and it was determined that my son required high adult oversight, a structured environment, explicit social skills instruction, and executive functioning training, so he was referred to the Autism Learning Center at Darnestown Elementary School (DES).

Designed in consultation with the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Dr. Andrew Egel, this program scaffolds the development of critical skills to mainstream kids with autism into general education, allowing them to learn alongside typically developing children.

Baked into the only diploma-bound program of its kind in the County was a 1:2:9 ratio (teacher:paraeducator:student) that allows this autism-specific program to be implemented with fidelity.

Zen spent his entire 2nd grade year at DES, and while it was a relief that teachers reported he was a bright student who was well-liked by his peers, I was stunned when assessments placed him at a kindergarten level in mathematics at the end of the year, typically one of his strengths.

Zen worked with a math teacher that summer. After a few sessions, the teacher said: “Your son is ahead in math. He already knows his 3rd-grade math facts and more.”

When I pressed him on why teachers reported he was behind, he replied: “Because these state-wide assessments do not do a good job of testing what these kids know.”

If these programs are successful, then why are they being dismantled?

Frustratingly, autism programs are being emaciated under the veil of equity and efficiency: That by combining kids with autism who were receiving the support they needed with other children with various learning disabilities with less specialized support means that all needs will be met.

Why have all these children drink from specialized cups of autism support when they can drink from a special education trough instead?

Diluting support for these kids under the veil of equity and efficiency is dishonest. These actions are ableist.

“Equity” would be expanding these autism-specific programs across the county and the nation. Every child with my son’s autism phenotype deserves the program that my son is enrolled in today.

Touting autism awareness while silently pulling the rug of support from under them are incongruous acts.

The assassination of autism-specific programs is a national issue. Just last year, schools in Houston, Texas eliminated their “autism services team”, which was described by an educator as a “lifeline” for teachers.

Instead, the school district generalized the support into a “special education unit.” Buffalo Public Schools in New York eliminated classes with the lowest student-to-teacher ratios for elementary school students with autism to “maximize resources.”

Autism is the fastest-growing developmental disability in the United States, with a prevalence that exceeds childhood cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined, per the Lurie Center for Autism, and affecting 1 in 36 children, according to the CDC.

There is both a current and future demand for autism-specific services, suggesting a need to expand specialized programs and enhance the recruitment and retention of autism-trained paraeducators. Diluting autism support is short-sighted and jeopardizes their chances of achieving independence as adults.

What happens after the ashes settle from these autism programs being burned to the ground? Students will fail.

My son will likely be found in a parking lot trying to escape a classroom with too many kids and overwhelmed by too many distractions. He will hit and kick kids and other adults because his 20-page behavioral intervention plan will be difficult to follow with swarms of other kids in his class.

Most importantly, the school system will rob him of a free and appropriate public education that he is entitled to under the law—that all children are entitled to under the law.

Until these autism programs produce Elon Musks or Greta Thunbergs en masse, they remain vulnerable targets for elimination.

As schools nationwide continue to chase rankings and fetishize test scores, support for neurodiverse kids will always be on the chopping block because they are not represented in places where decisions are being made. They will never get there if the educational support for them does not exist when they are young.

Autism-specific programs are vital early investments that multiply when neurodiverse kids enter the workforce as adults and view problems in novel ways, which then result in innovative solutions.

The world needs “all kinds of minds”, as Temple Grandin says, and the competitiveness of the next generation of our workforce depends on it.

Performative Autism Awareness needs to stop and authentic autism acceptance needs to start—beginning with schools.

Jamie Doyle is a single mother of two small kids and one has autism. She is a program director for the U.S. government.

All views expressed are the author’s own.

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