Frequently Asked Questions
What is Project DATA?
Project DATA (Developmentally Appropriate Treatment for Autism) is a school-based program for young children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The project was developed as part of a model demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Education with strong in kind support from the Seattle Public Schools. Currently we are funded by a combination of school district money and private donations.
The Project DATA Model consists of five components shown and described below.
The core component of the program is an integrated preschool program. The integrated preschool program provides children with opportunities to interact successfully with typically developing peers and uses empirically validated instructional strategies to embed instruction across all classroom activities.
The preschool program is supplemented by an extended day program that provides additional explicit instruction. One goal of Project DATA is to blend different instructional strategies to meet individual needs. Specifically, we blend philosophies and instructional strategies from early childhood special education (ECSE) and applied behavior analysis (ABA) to provide developmentally appropriate instruction to all children with ASD.
Children typically attend the half-day integrated preschool either in the morning or afternoon five days a week. Three days a week children attend an extended instructional day for 3 hours and 45 minutes. Project DATA provides a model for toddlers with ASD that consists of the same components of the preschool model, with modifications appropriate to the development and needs of the younger children. Toddlers typically attend their integrated playgroup twice a week for one and a half hours each day and then attend the extended day program three days a week for two hours each day.
Our program also provides social and technical support for families. Project DATA staff provide monthly home visits and monthly parent education meetings. The toddler component provides additional family support including a weekly home visit. We work with families individually to identify their priorities and to accomplish their goals for themselves and their children.
What research supports the instructional strategies used in Project DATA?
All instructional strategies used in Project DATA have been validated empirically in the behavioral and educational research literature. Some of these instructional strategies include incidental teaching, discrete trial training, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS), visual support strategies, and effective prompting strategies (e.g., time delay, most to least prompting, graduated guidance). Data are collected daily on child performance to determine the effectiveness of all programs to teach new behaviors and decrease challenging behaviors.
Why 20 hours a week?
We provide school-based programming for 20 hours a week for two primary reasons. First, 20 hours is within the range of hours provided by programs that have documented positive outcomes for young children with ASD. Second, the schedule of the extended day program between the morning and afternoon preschool sessions is an ecologically valid model, That is, with this model, school districts and other programs will be able to replicate and reasonably sustain this model of services.
What research is used for establishing guidelines on number of hours offered within the school setting?
There are no conclusive data that support a specific number of hours as the necessary number for all children with ASD. Recommendations from the National Research Council (2001) include a minimum of 25 hours a week in which the child is engaged in systematically planned and developmentally appropriate educational activity that is individualized to the child's needs and objectives. Additionally, in the seven programs for children with ASD with documented positive outcomes reviewed by Dawson and Osterling (1997) the number of hours of intervention provided ranged from 15-40 per week. The most recent study by Sallows and Graupner (2003) demonstrates no difference between groups of young children with ASD who received 30 hours of intensive intervention and those who received 40. Approximately half the children in both groups made impressive gains. The results from the Toddler Project DATA are even more impressive. Five of the first eight participants of this project are fully included in elementary school.
What is your teacher-student ratio?
We have a minimum of one adult to two children. Children work in different size groups and individually with adults. Group assignments are made on an individual basis for all children.
Whom does the program serve?
We are currently serving 16 children in the extended day portion of Project DATA. All the children have an independent diagnosis on the autism spectrum.
What are staff qualifications?
The project coordinator serves as the lead teacher of the classroom and supervises all educational assistants. She is a master’s level teacher with training in autism, applied behavior analysis and early childhood special education. Educational assistants range from certified teachers to people with experience working with children but no formal training in education. Additionally, Ph.D. level consultants provide training, family support, and consultation.
What protocol do you follow when establishing a student’s educational program?
The children enter our program with an ASD diagnosis and qualified for special education services. The purpose of the assessments that we conduct is to assist us in writing the child’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and instructional programs. Preschool classroom staff and extended day staff work together to conduct a curriculum-based assessment for each child at the beginning and end of every year. Currently we are using the Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System developed by Diane Bricker. This assessment gives us a picture of what skills and behaviors the children demonstrate in the classroom without adult support and what skills they can demonstrate with support. We supplement this assessment with a project-developed probe of basic attending, communication, imitation, and pre-academic skills. We also gather information from families via interviews and checklists about their priorities for their child. These issues and concerns are addressed in the child’s individualized educational program.
Do you follow a specific curriculum?
No, we do not follow a specific published curriculum, but we have a conceptual framework and curricular guidelines that inform the programs we develop for individual children and their families. We use the curricular areas identified by Dawson and Osterling (1997) as the core of our program. These areas are attention, imitation, communication, social interaction, and play. We also address skills for independence (e.g., adaptive skills, sensory processing, independent play), visual performance, pre-academics, and social/emotional regulation. These areas make up the core of the curriculum for all children in the program. We develop individual plans for children based on a variety of information including their assessments (AEPS and Project DATA checklist), classroom observations, parent reports, home visits, and teacher reports. These assessment activities assist us in determining where in the scope and sequence of each of these broad domains the child needs specific instruction. Once we identify the target behaviors, we write instructional programs, including guidelines for data collection and programming for generalization, for every behavior we are teaching.
What plan do you have for training staff? Who does the training?
Staff receive training in basic behavioral principles, effective instructional strategies including discrete trial training and naturalistic intervention strategies, program development, data collection and analysis, and the fundamentals of generalization. Senior project staff conduct all staff training.
How do you supply technical and social support for families?
Project DATA staff members meet with families individually to identify their needs for social and technical support. Staff work with families to address their priorities in the context of home visits and community consultation. For example, a staff member provided training for the childcare and religious school staff of one family’s church. The family reported this training helped them include their son more fully into their church community. Another family reported difficulties with their morning routine, so a staff member went to their house at 6 a.m. to observe and together identified sustainable solutions to the problem. She has also set up toilet training programs for children and helped parents implement them. Finally, all families are invited to participate in monthly educational programs held at the school. The topics are determined jointly by the staff and family members and include topics such as: using family-guided routines to teach behaviors, dealing with challenging behaviors, and using visual support strategies to facilitate independent behavior.
