The Glass Slipper Principle

I remember watching Cinderella with the kids I babysat for, and the enchantment of a glass slipper—one that would have to fit its bearer perfectly, since it couldn’t stretch to accommodate any other foot. Remember the ladies of the town trying to make their feet fit into that tiny shoe?



The glass slipper principle comes into play when we’re talking about something as precious as our children with Autism. Missouri needs to ensure that the programs available to them are the right ones for them. Children falling along a spectrum as diverse as Autism cannot be served by a broad, catch-all kind of education—it would leave too many behind.

That’s the impetus behind several new types of schools that AutismVox outlines in a great article:

One Size Does Not Fit All: Three Different Autism Schools
by Kristina Chew, PhD on May 25th, 2007
New schools for autistic children are opening in Arizona (in the Prescott area; see story) and in British Columbia (see story). The schools are quite different and suggest how, as we learn more about how best to educate autistic children and foster learning, new school models, different curricula, and teaching methodologies must be considered.
Parents of autistic children—Angela Levin in Arizona and Nicole Kaler and Dale Petersen in British Columbia—are the forces behind the two schools, both of which seek to serve different age groups: In Arizona, ASCEND, or Autism Spectrum Center for Educational and Neurological Development, will base its curriculum on ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) and will teach both children diagnosed with autism and also children diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. In British Columbia, Harmony House will first house a preschool and then an elementary school for autistic children and non-autistic children; the preschool now has four spaces reserved for autistic children, out of fourteen total spaces, and the elementary school will have spaces for 10 autistic children (that is, it seems that the majority of the children in Harmony House will not be autistic).
As both schools are private, there is tuition, $23,000 per year for autistic children and $16,000 for per year for children with Asperger Syndrome at ASCEND, and $450 per month for three days of instruction per week at the Harmony House preschool. As a comparison, the new public autism center, the Developmental Learning Center, that is opening in New Jersey in June, costs $67,000 per year for a 42 week program for 37 hours a week. (And, I should also note, many private autism schools in New Jersey have even higher tuitions.) I am not sure if it is really possible to compare these tuition figures, as the three schools are very different, intend to serve different populations of children, and are of different sizes.
One thing that can be gained from the comparison is to note that there is more than one way to set up an autism school. I have a sense of the kind of training and supervision that aides, teachers, and other personnel receive here in New Jersey, and also of the work needed to make materials and keep records of students’ learning: It is no small effort. Even within New Jersey, there are many different autism schools based on different teaching methodologies, with different teacher to student ratios, and a parent has to make a lot of school visits, do their research, and carefully discern just where a child is, in order to choose the right kind of school. And when a parent has found such a school, a parent most definitely will work—like the Winkelmans against the Parma School District—-to get their child into the school placement that seems the best suited to foster a child’s learning.
One more question remains to be asked: Is your preference regarding autism education for a public program or for a private school (that a public school district pays for)? And what about home-schooling?

This principle is at the core of MO SB 993 and HB 1886, like a decree from a prince asking the one who fits this amazing shoe to come out of the shadows. The price tags on these services are hefty, but their value to our children is priceless.