How well are children with autism spectrum disorder doing academically at school? An overview of the literature.
School performance in autism is all over the map, so you must test each child’s skills instead of trusting the diagnosis alone.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Keen et al. (2016) mapped every paper they could find on how kids with autism do in school. They looked at report cards, test scores, and teacher notes. The goal was to see what we know and what we still need to study.
What they found
Grades and test scores swing from very low to very high. Most studies focus on young, higher-IQ kids. Teens and kids with intellectual disability are barely studied. We still know little about how classrooms help or hurt learning.
How this fits with other research
Plaisted et al. (2006) and Wei et al. (2015) show the same scatter the review found. Some kids read words fine but understand little. Others struggle with both. Growth curves dip most in reading comprehension.
Bremer et al. (2020) extend the story. They mixed kids with and without ASD into three groups based on attention. Poor attention hurt math in both groups, but reading only in typical kids. This adds attention as a new piece to profile.
McCauley et al. (2018) also extend the review. Self-confidence matched real math scores in ASD, yet kids often guessed their reading level wrong. This warns us not to trust student self-ratings when picking reading goals.
Why it matters
Stop using one label to plan lessons. Build a quick profile for each learner: word reading, comprehension, math, attention, and self-confidence. Use this profile to pick goals, not the generic IEP template. Track teens closely; the data gap means you are the experiment.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The academic achievement of individuals with autism spectrum disorder has received little attention from researchers despite the importance placed on this by schools, families and students with autism spectrum disorder. Investigating factors that lead to increased academic achievement thus would appear to be very important. A review of the literature was conducted to identify factors related to the academic achievement of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. A total of 19 studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria for the review. Results indicated that many individuals demonstrate specific areas of strength and weakness and there is a great deal of variability in general academic achievement across the autism spectrum. Adolescents and individuals with lower IQ scores were underrepresented, and few studies focused on environmental factors related to academic success. The importance of individualised assessments that profile the relative strengths and weaknesses of children and adolescents to aid in educational programming was highlighted. Further research on child-related and environmental factors that predict academic achievement is needed.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2016 · doi:10.1177/1362361315580962