Why is there an achievement gap in ASD?
Here are some notes from observation at two different schools in the district where I spent a few days each in ASD classrooms.
School A
School A is in a moderate mixed income class neighborhood in south city. However, one can believe upon stepping into the campus that this is in north city. That is there is a high achievement mindset embedded throughout the campus from the security to the maintenance. Everyone arrives early and there is a can-do attitude with thoughtful arrangement of campus classrooms outside to allow ASD students to safely circumambulate the school corridors during time-out.
There were seven ASD students in one classroom grades K-3, however mostly the emphasis is on a curricula designed around grade 1-2, since at least four students have speech-communication challenges. The classroom took a day or two to get used to, but one gradually notices the extent of relative effort and accomplishment on display throughout the classroom. There is artwork from Christmas strung creatively from a ceiling string. There are compositions emphasizing a recent unit on zoo animals. There is an anticipatory board with displays about the current transportation through history unit. In the front of the class below the large-wide-flat-screen display is a display of the sign language alphabet. The sides of the room also include cabinets for storage boxes for math-learning toys, books for reading, and sensory manipulatives.
The day was well-structured in intervals of 15 minutes to half an hour, so there was limited idleness and encouragement of students to appreciate school activities. When students arrive, they have an option for breakfast and then bins. All of the students are brought to campus by their parents, which allows face-time with the teacher. All of them are bringing lunchboxes with snacks if not lunch and snacks. The students have a homework and student folder for turning in to the teacher. The student folder is for taking notes from behavior and progress. The students are capable of sedentary (voice controlled) play and comprehend basic directions and rules for the classroom.
The morning includes circle time (daily review, calendar, reciting, anticipation for end of week field trip). This is followed by work station time or sensory time. This is repeated twice before recess. Following recess is a snack time with educational videos. The videos are well-chosen, for instance, clean-up time video, scholastic videos accompanying an educational unit, and after recess or before lunch a quiet soothing time video. The videos encourage focus particularly as Ms. F. will halt the video for review and questions or to complete a screen fact sheet. There are designated times for independent learning because there is space for individual desks facing the front screen.
Throughout the morning and afternoon the speech communication therapist would come in and pull students out for sessions. Having a permanent, experienced consistent therapist such as Ms. S. was extremely helpful as she would also come in for observation and take notes. Several other people came in for observation and notes, and in fact, Ms. F. was very welcoming of these observers and encouraging of their passive involvement.
During lunch the aides assist with lunchtime and recess. The students are included in the recess with grade-level recess classes. They are also included in the same hours that normal grades have lunch in the cafeteria.
Afternoons are times dedicated for intensive workgroup or independent computerized math learning. The students have their own tablet and computer to perform individualized curricula based on their current level of math, plus compensatory techniques to compensate for speech communication styles and tactile learning preference. For instance several students have multiple choice style math games, click-and-match, click-and-drag, or animated puzzles. Ms. F. is also encouraging them to use the whiteboard for practice drawing letters and numbers. Almost every student can use a pencil properly, use an eraser, and color with crayons, and print their name legibly on their worksheets. Math class is reinforced with a final lesson in completing a math class worksheet. The teacher writes in the answers for those students who only understand counting. Every student is capable of counting to at least 10, and recognizing those numbers.
Although there were several on and off "crisis management" incidents, the goal appears to be to help the student transition away from that and try to prevent such incidents from absorbing and wasting classroom learning time. When such incidents occurred there was an emphasis on learning from as an example, while not overly shaming the student; the teachers tried to allow teaching moments to manage such incidents to coincide with in-class break time.
Teacher had familiarity enough with each parent to feel comfortable calling them if necessary during the middle of the day and also additional face time with them at the end of each school day. Parents were even invited inside to sit their child at the desk in the morning if they want to. It was not an issue insofar as campus security; there is parent sign-in.
The final half hour is usually bin time just as during the morning session at the start of the class. The students often like to play with the same toys they did before, but some are capable of assembling jigsaw puzzles even up to a twenty piece puzzle set. Because of anticipatory lessons and training, all the students were excited and engaged about the upcoming zoo trip. One thing is Ms. F. does not spend much time debriefing this observer, but this is okay for the most part. The other thing is that several teachers referred to this classroom as "the crazy classroom" and had this attitude that seemed stigmatizing. Ms. F. deserves more encouragement and support for her hard work.
As far as this observer's interactions with the teachers, staff, and administrators on this campus they were helpful and pleasant in a genuine kind of way. The office manager is very helpful and capable. The staff have a love of plants and this is obvious in the decor of the staff lunch room even, and the campus is a welcoming place for parent-teacher meetings. The teachers in room 16 were also warm and welcoming and did not press this observer for too many details or appear overly preoccupied with shoptalk or grapevine news.
School B
In contrast, School B was a bit of a disappointment. Mrs. V., the substitute principal, was warm and welcoming, but most of the office staff were also substitutes, so there was an appearance of not being so well-versed in protocols. The campus is older and the classroom size of approximately 20 x 30 was insufficient for 12 active ASD students. The security was not very friendly, and the neighborhood did not feel that safe, as this observer noted several cars lingering on the northern fence line of the school.
The tone of the school, which is supposed to center around warriors and progression towards high school and beyond, appears dominated by an urban-ghettoized atmosphere. It is almost as if this is an assertively blue-collar dominated workforce with an emphasis on maintaining workforce turf by fostering a lower achievement standard environment.
Mrs. C. led me to believe that this is what she like to be called and it was not till later that I realized everyone else called her Mrs. A. Mrs. R., her teaching assistant, insisted and persistently called me "teacher" in what sounded quite sarcastic. I reminded her several times that I wanted to be called by my first name or Ms. C but she persistently ignored this. To make matters worse, Mrs. R., who told me that she had recently transitioned from being an office administrator to becoming a teacher or teaching assistant, appeared to enjoy using her smartphone quite a bit during the class times. She said that she was creating a "yearbook" on the students by taking photos of them with her private phone. She called a student, A., her "mimi" and "baby" and asked me if I didn't agree that he was like a big cute baby. During workgroup time, she was thumbing through her smartphone reading district notices and news, and throughout the days, she appeared to enjoy talking about grapevine workplace news and job openings and her opportunities or past interviews here and there, and what she thought about this school or that school, and the payrates offered at those locations. She did not appear to have much formal certificated teacher training or understanding of pedagogic theory.
Twice she also attempted to misdirect this worker as the contract at this school was 1-to-1 with a certain ASD student whose mother came to drop her off and pick her up. Instead she told me that I should bring this boy and that boy to the bus stop, and twice, these boys were extremely difficult to handle. This was after another boy had already bit and scratched this worker during a work centers session. Ms. A. led this worker to believe that all these students were in kindergarten, when age-wise they were between 5-8 years old at least. This would be based on physical size and the appearance of mostly adult-teeth on at least 5 of the boys and 1 of the girls.
The classroom curricula was also extremely lax and this appeared quite intentional. For instance, students arrived by bus or brought by their parents after 8 am, and there was breakfast time until at least 8:45 am, and so this left the students sitting for quite a long time at the breakfast table in the back of the classroom near the sink. The students would lose interest in eating and start playing with their food, standing up, and or try to wander away. This would create "behavioral" crisis encounters with the teacher and the teacher aides, which the teacher would document in great detail in her log, what the student did, how he or she misbehaved, how resistant they were, etc.
This kind of behavioral "crisis management" occurred throughout the day with various students. On one level, these distractions gave the class something to focus on, and emphasized the importance of staying seated. On the other hand, there was a lack of curricula or structure. There was a lot of video viewing with rather unchoice videos from YouTube. For instance, mornings and afternoons, the teacher liked to put on "Danny Go" videos, featuring a strange man and his team acting out their learning adventures. These thematic videos have a very helter-skelter plot, and Danny Go and his team also like to jump, climb, run, and dance a lot. Obviously with the ASD students it really tends to trigger their hyperactivity, and it makes it almost impossible for them to stay seated. So it depends whom the teacher and assistants want to focus on for "being out of their seat." Very little academic learning is taking place because these videos are not prime learning material; they are learning entertainment or secondary reinforcement material.
The other chunk of the morning or afternoon is spent on centers, but these are also of a limited variety curricula. For instance, this observer was responsible for 1 of 3 or 4 centers. At DBB the only activity offered is assembling puzzles or reading books. Since no child in this class is capable of reading yet, when given a book, they would rather hyperactively thumb through all the pages and then toss the book down or throw it aside. If you try to engage a student in a book, they might linger on a page for a space of 3 seconds, and clearly they have not even been shown what a book is for. As for puzzles, most of the students are very good at assembling 5-10 piece puzzles. They have done the same set of about 12 puzzles enough times, that they probably have the pieces memorized. My 1-1 student even was assembling the puzzle pieces face down, assembling them from the backside.
The teacher did do math center with several students who were capable of or teaching them subtraction, but more often than not, this resulted in the student developing a tantrum and breaking into tears and fits of screaming. The other aide at HRW seemed to do a decent job at teaching them "handwriting." Note since nobody actually used pencils, crayons, paper, or notebook, I was not able to personally ascertain exactly how she was teaching HRW, except that there was no student work on display on any walls. Mrs R., as stated above, was merely mostly scrolling through her phone while attending the students at PRT, which appeared to be a play-time station (grooming a doll, train car set, car set).
Undoubtedly for a staff of three, the 12 ASD students are a load even during recess and lunchtime. For instance, during recess several students keep throwing wood chips at each other. At least one boy has a fascination for tossing the wood chips up into the air to watch them fall down. He has the same stimulative fascination with playing with paper against the air heater in the classroom. They also will block or sit up against the steps leading to the slide making it hard for other students to use the slide. Several of the students will try to wander off. During lunch time it is similar that they will play with their food, or not eat anything, or interfere with another student trying to eat. None of them appear to understand how to say "thank you" although one child, a gal, has much better interpersonal skills than the rest, and will even greet the janitor. She is only marginally ASD or has some learning, basically math, challenges, so hopefully she may eventually transition out of the ASD program.
According to Ms. A., however, she is not necessarily encouraging of parental involvement. She told this observer that the white protective gate for the doorway was to "prevent the parents from entering and staying inside the classroom." She does stay afterschool and talks to each and every parent who stops by, but she does not seem to want them actually inside the classroom, maybe because she realizes how small and dingy it can appear to be for outsiders and newcomers at first. She does appear to be capable of using the time wisely for her teaching management tasks, for instance, during morning breakfast, during the hour-long sensory training time with playdough, and while the Danny Go videos are playing, she does manage to get a lot of grading, teacher notebook, and planning type work done, with time to spare to talk with Mrs. R. about her career.
For instance, one good unit plan that she developed was a Lego assembly unit accompanied by Lego videos and she did find two or three Lego videos which encouraged the students to chant the alphabet and rehearse their number counting capability of mostly between 1-10.
Conclusion
In School A, the teacher and her assistant consciously worked on the whole student and created as inclusionary an environment as possible so that those who are in mainstream classrooms understand grade-level work. At-grade materials are adapted so that the students aspire to learn and engage with the world around them. There is adequate time for social and interpersonal growth so ASD students develop better self-awareness. As a result, every student knew how to use pencil, paper, and crayons. This did also created noticeable stress for the teacher and her assistant, however, the parents are more pleased with the overall outcome, and parental involvement with student experience and growth was high.
Photo by author, DC Prison near Stadium Armory