Welcome to IDEA Partnership's Collaborative Work on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

The IDEA Partnership is dedicated to improving outcomes for students and youth with disabilities by joining state agencies and stakeholders through shared work and learning. This dedication has been operationalized in the collaborative work on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) of 12 partner organization representatives, nine national and state technical assistance providers, and a number of state and local organizations and agencies. Members of this ASD collaborative work group represent a range of roles at all levels of the education system as well as coming from geographic locations from across the United States. Together with the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), these partners form a community with the potential to transform the way we work.  Click here to view the members of the ASD Collection development team.

You can read the law, regulations and OSEP materials at the OSEP website: Building the Legacy: IDEA 2004. Click on Part B.  Enter "Autism" in the search window.

IDEA 2004 defines Autism:

"Autism means a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age three, that adversely affects a child's educational performance.

Other characteristics often associated with autism are engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences."

• Our Charge is to think about ASD from stakeholder perspectives at all knowledge levels, to look at things differently, and to speak to practical application by taking the ideas of researchers and making them tangible to those in the field.

• Our Goal is to provide you with access to a comprehensive collection of materials and resources to assist you in furthering understanding of ASD. We hope this collection complements your current work, and we encourage you to share it with your colleagues and peers.

• Guiding Principles

• Fact Sheet

• Essential Elements

• Grounding Assumptions

• Needs of the Field

• Glossary

• Resource Guide
  

• Standards of Evidence in Autism Spectrum Disorders
  Policymakers, practitioners and families know that there is an abundance of information on approaches to ASD.  This information is often confusing and sometimes conflicting. To bring clarity to the discussion several projects have undertaken the task of establishing criteria and reviewing approaches against their criteria.  Not all projects set the same level of evidence in their criteria. In this section we present major initiatives to identify evidence-based practices in autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Characteristics--PowerPoint

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Characteristics--Presenter Guide

This PowerPoint presentation and accompanying Presenter Guide provide basic information about the characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) including:

prevalence and diversity of asd,

perception,

self-regulation,

problem-solving, and

potential/outcomes.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Supports/Interventions--PowerPoint
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) Supports/Interventions--Presenter Guide

This PowerPoint and Presenter guide provide information about interventions considered to be appropriate for those providing services for children with ASD including:

classroom routines,

visual instructions, rules, and schedules,

sensory and emotional,

regulation supports,

transition supports and

structured environment.

Dialogue Guides for the ASD Collection

Dialogue Guides are models for conducting interactive discussions across stakeholders.. Each Guide circulates a common set of source materials and suggested procedures for involving various audiences in States and districts. In this manner, stakeholders all over the country can begin interacting in new ways around implementation issues. Each dialogue guide title has questions written specifically for a target audience by representatives of that audience.

Your Voice

Your experiences help the Partnership and our readers understand issues and perspectives.  Please take a minute to share:

Your ASD initiative and the strategies involved

What strategies are working and reasons for success

What problems (barriers) you have encountered and how they were solved

Innovative approaches to interventions

How you promote ASD initiative across groups and organizations.

To help us understand how the Partnership collection is useful, please take a minute to share:

How you used the collection
Your reactions to the collection
Your ideas for improving the collection