U.S. may train teachers on how to help autistic

Published in the Asbury Park Press 5/10/02

By JOSEPH PICARD
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Federal money will go specifically for training teachers to deal with autistic students if a bill sponsored by Reps. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., and Michael Doyle, D-Pa., becomes law.

The Teacher Education for Autistic Children, or TEACH, Act would appropriate $20 million over five years for training teachers and paraprofessionals, and provide a tax credit for educators who take training courses in teaching the autistic.

"We've made a number of gains in addressing the autistic issue over the past few years, but we need to go further," Smith said yesterday. "The TEACH act will help us reach our goal."

Smith and Doyle expected to introduce the bill in Congress today or Monday.

No federal money is specifically directed to training of teachers who deal with the autistic. The federal government budgets about $140 million annually for special-education teacher training.

Autism, first identified in the 1940s, is a developmental disorder that impairs a person's social interaction and language skills. Though it once was thought to be rare, recent studies -- one of which was conducted in Brick -- made use of state-of-the-art techniques for detecting the disorder and found that autism occurs in up to one in every 150 children. Even with less thorough detection methods, autism rates have been found to be increasing dramatically.

The cause is unknown, although the majority of researchers believe it is genetic. There is no known cure, although the disorder can be treated. But treatment requires trained professionals, and that, like continued research, requires money.

Smith, whose district includes parts of Ocean and Monmouth counties, was one of the catalysts for the Brick study and has been in the forefront in trying to get federal money for training and research in autism.

The TEACH bill would authorize $15 million in grants, administered by the federal Department of Education under its Special Education Personnel Preparation program, for training both special-education and regular classroom teachers and aides. Some $5 million more would be meted out by states under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

A professional who takes a certified course in teaching the autistic would be eligible for an income tax credit up to $10,000. In addition, the bill calls for reports on the effectiveness of strategies from the grantees and the appointment of a task force to further study the ailment and how schools should deal with it.

"It's a good bill," said David O. Weiss, director of student services in Lacey. "We've hardly scratched the surface regarding what we know and what we need to know about autism. More and more children are being diagnosed . . . and it is so critical to reach these students in the first years."

"It's a step in the right direction," said Bob Lanzieri, a Brick resident and co-founder of Parents of Autistic Children. "Some of us have been saying for several years that there have got to be better ways of teaching the autistic. This funding can help us get the better methods into the classrooms."

In related actions, Smith is seeking through appropriations legislation to increase federal autism research funding from $65 million to $100 million at the National Institute of Health, and from $9.2 million to $17.2 million at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.