Is it better to place a high functioning child in a public school mainstream class or in and ESE school?

Question

My son is going to 4th grade. He has always been in a regular class in his public school with a one to one aide. He is on the honor roll and doing well. We have an opportunity to place him in a small ESE school where he would have no aide but would be in a class of 8 to 10 kids at most. He is high functioning autistic.

Answer 1

Keep  him in the regular class in his public school.  As you say, he's doing well there.  Given that autism is a disability of impaired socialization skills, keeping your son in a class with his typically-developing peers (where he can practice and learn appropriate social skills from them) is his best bet.

Answer 2

There are two ways to look at this. The first is the thought that by being with mainstream kids, he will eventually pick up on social behavior from being with them. This would probably be wrong. He needs to be specifically taught social behavior and if they can't provide it in a regular school, then you may want to move him so a special school for a couple of years to be directly taught these behaviors. Of course, it is preferable that he stay in his mainstream school with specific social skills instruction.

Having an aide is not really a great idea as he gets older because assistants don't necessarily have the skills to teach social behavior and end up making the child prompt dependent. There are aides that can do this, but they are rare.

It is a hard decision to make, but taking him out of a regular school for a couple years makes sense if there is no one at the regular school to provide this instruction that is needed. This may be one of the things you need to address on your next IEP. Since he is high functioning then there is a very good chance that he can lead and independent life, given correct social skills training. It MUST happen.

Answer 3

keep him in public school. if he's high functioning and doing well then why mess with it. know maybe in high school he might have to move over into a specail class. but for now its just fine. The regular kids also need the experiance of working, communcating, and overall just feeling confortable around him. He's unknowingly is also teaching his classmate that poeple with a disablity can be funcitioning productive citazins. isn't that what you want? Plus as you said he's doing well. now if he was struggleing then I'd concider it