Number of autistic Calif. students triples

SACRAMENTO, July 12 (UPI) -- The number of students diagnosed with autism in California schools has tripled in less than 10 years, from 14,000 to 46,000, healthcare professionals said.

Experts told the San Francisco Chronicle the growth is because of better diagnosis. Many of the students now classified as autistic would have been called learning disabled or mentally retarded until recently.

"If you show me 100 kids with autism, 60 percent would not have been diagnosed that way 10 years ago," said Bryna Siegel, director of the Autism Clinic at the University of California-San Francisco.

The Autism Advisory Committee of the state Education Department said in a report issued last fall that California schools have not agreed on a cost-effective way of delivering appropriate services for autistic children. That leaves school districts scrambling to meet the requirement that all disabled students must get services, and digging into regular education budgets to pay for special education.

The state legislature's Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism said the soaring numbers are a "public health crisis."