autism scholarship

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Ohio Autism Scholarship Adopted As National Model

By J. Maurer for ThisWeek.

http://tinyurl.com/hnao9

An Ohio law sponsored by state Rep. Jon (R-Delaware)

has

been accepted as national model legislation by the American

Legislative

Exchange Council, of which is a member.

" It's patterned almost verbatim, " said, referring to

the

Ohio

Autism Scholarship Program adopted by the General Assembly three

years

ago.

said the program provides funding for approximately 500

families

with autistic children who cannot be served easily in available

public

schools.

The model legislation substantially duplicates the Ohio law.

" They just made some generic changes, to make it generally

applicable

for all states, " said.

Matt Warner, director of the ALEC Education Task Force, said

the

legislation was approved by the task force in July and will be

formally

adopted by the ALEC board of directors in pending weeks.

" Almost all the states are dealing with a significant increase

in

the

number of autistic students that they have, " Warner said.

" Autism is not unique (to Ohio), " said. " It's almost

of

epidemic proportions. "

The issue is particularly complex, not only because of the

particular

needs of autistic students relative to the general student

population,

but

also because there are many variations of autism and autism spectrum

disorder, Warner said.

ALEC, which describes its mission as promoting free-market,

limited

government public policy, is both a membership organization of state

legislators and a policy development institution, comparable to the

National

Conference of State Legislatures, Warner said.

Warner said he could not identify a comparable

progressive-leaning

legislative association; groups including Common Cause, Defenders of

Wildlife and the National Resources Defense Council have criticized

the

association as being industry-sponsored.

Warner said the purpose of ALEC is to provide vetted models of

legislation that states may adapt to their particular needs. He

cited

other

special needs education-legislation that ALEC has also adopted.

" It's a significant part of what we do, bring legislators

together

from all over the country to deliberate and come up with new ideas

or

build

on existing that have worked well elsewhere, " Warner said.

said ALEC members came from both the Republican and

Democrat

parties.

, who attended the ALEC national conference in San

Francisco

that adopted the model legislation, said ALEC approval was not

automatic. He

said he witnessed the rejection of several other model legislation

proposals

that were being considered at the same time as the autism model.

" A lot of times in these things, all the work is done in the

sub-committees and simply ratified, 'Let's move on to the next

thing'

kind

of thing, " said. " That was not the case here. "

In addition to working with ALEC, has also traveled to

legislative sessions in Wisconsin and Indiana to testify about and

promote

autism legislation.