This reinforcement of life skills is one of the things his mother, Terri, likes best about the Appleton Area School District’s programming for children with autism.

When the Raith family relocated to the Fox Valley in 1994, she and her husband, Greg, chose to live in Appleton largely because of what they had heard about the school district’s autism program, which enrolled about 30 children at the time.

As Appleton’s reputation spread, more families moved in. The rapid rise in what was once a low-incidence disability also caused enrollment to grow.

Today Appleton serves 70 pupils with autism, evidence of an epidemic in identification across Wisconsin and the United States.

Berttram Chiang, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh special-education professor, who heads a research team studying special-education identification, said that while other disabilities have remained fairly level in recent years, autism has risen consistently.

Autism is a complex neurological disorder that affects individuals in the areas of social interaction and communication. It is a spectrum disorder, meaning symptoms can occur in any combination and in varying degrees of severity.

Terri Raith knew “something was not right” with her third child when Michael was an infant.

“He just didn’t give me eye contact when I interacted with him,” she recalled.

At age 4, after early-intervention and early-childhood program placement, Michael got a label. But the Raiths, like many other parents, received no prognosis of what he would be able to learn.

Nonverbal with cognitive delays, Michael communicates with pictures to express his choices to eat, drink or use the bathroom. He likes playing computer games, loves the TV Weather Channel and bobs his head to just about any kind of music.

Despite difficulties — epilepsy and grand mal seizures that started in first grade, aspiration pneumonia, and years of regulating medication — Michael continues to progress and the Raiths have learned to be grateful for every small gain.

While autism remains something of a mystery, the explosion in identification has become a public health issue, said Paul Shattuck, Autism Society of Wisconsin board member.

In 1993, fewer than 400 children were identified statewide. By 1996, Shattuck said, there were 669 children in state public schools with an autism diagnosis. By last December the number had grown by 286 percent to 2,581.

Shattuck hopes to convince state legislators to conduct an inquiry into autism’s growing prevalence, and determine how state and local agencies can become better prepared to deal with it.

Sara Spoerl, a parent of two children with autism and executive director for ASW based in Appleton, said that when her oldest child was diagnosed eight years ago, the U.S. autism rate was one in 10,000 people.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control has put the rate at one in 250, Spoerl said.

“And that’s a conservative estimate for the United States. This is not over-identification. This is real, and other countries are seeing similar increases.”

Whether the cause is genetic or biomedical is the subject of a heated debate, Spoerl said, with childhood immunization reactions — some believe too many vaccines are given too quickly — among the suspects.

Regardless of the cause, children like Michael Raith need services, and services for children with autism are among the most expensive.

Many require an aide, plus speech, occupational and physical therapy and behavioral interventions. A number also have medical needs.

Concern over growing special-education costs and enrollments led the state Legislature’s Senate and Assembly Education committees to ask for the UWO study.

Chiang and his team will look at whether new state special-education eligibility rules, updated in July 2001 after no change in nearly three decades, have had an impact on the number of children identified with a disability and the number determined to need special-education services.

It also will look at parent complaints and litigation.

Chiang said baseline data gathered for the past seven years shows Wisconsin’s special-education enrollment for ages 3-5 has grown a cumulative 11 percent, while ages 6-21 has grown 23 percent.

Cognitive, emotional and low-incidence disabilities have remained relatively flat, Chiang said, but autism and another category OHI (other health impaired, including attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) are on a steep incline.

Learning-disabilities totals, which rose at an alarming rate for years, have leveled off somewhat in Wisconsin but are still high, he said.

Chiang hopes to see their number drop with meaningful education reform.

“A large percentage of LD children may be better dealt with by more effective early-intervention programs, particularly in reading,” Chiang said.

Chiang and fellow professor Craig Fiedler, principal investigator in the study, noted that their data analysis shows districts with the highest socio-economic status have the lowest percentage of children qualifying for special-education services and vice versa.

Yet some districts’ special-education populations grow because they are viewed as specialists in certain disabilities, like Appleton with autism.

Spoerl said she moved to Appleton last summer hoping to gain easier access to more services for her children and battle less with school personnel. She said Appleton staff members “are often ahead of me with ideas to implement. My kids are flourishing.”

Terri Raith, a part-time educational assistant in Appleton’s autism program for two years, agreed.

The Raiths collaborate with school staff and a private therapist who comes into their home to work with Michael on such functional skills as unloading the dishwasher and making snacks.

“I tell them what we are doing here at home and they incorporate it at summer school,” Raith said.

Michael, who just completed sixth grade at Berry Elementary School, has benefited greatly from being around other children, his mom said.