About six years ago, Katie (not her real name), who is autistic, couldn’t read “Don’t Walk.” Her mom worried she’d never develop basic comprehension to keep her safe while crossing the street.


“She was using some of the best curricula out there, and yet she still wasn’t mastering it,” remembers Colleen Davis, a Monterey County Office of Education board-certified behavior analyst.


Katie’s now in high school. She’s got a date for the prom. And not only can she read and understand street signs, “she is texting up a storm,” Davis says.


Katie’s transformation didn’t happen overnight. It was a slow process – but a major victory and one that Davis and others say was brought about by an approach to autism education developed by a Watsonville company, Tucci Learning Solutions, called the Competent Learner Model. Schools statewide in Pennsylvania and Virginia use CLM, as well as most between San Jose and King City. (Santa Cruz County uses a different autism education program.)


In Monterey County, the Office of Education formally implemented the model two years ago, and specialists say it’s making a marked improvement.


“It wasn’t until we fully brought [Katie] into the CLM curriculum and we addressed a variety of areas that had not been previously addressed – some of the participation and problem solver repertoires – that things started turning around,” Davis says.


CLM includes staff training – teaching the teachers and aides about best-practices for autism education – and its lesson plans are designed to facilitate children’s ability to listen, observe, read, write, talk and participate.


“We’re teaching communication and social and life skills that are functional and academic,” explains Patty Bloomer, teacher for MCOE’s behavior assistance and support program. “They may not have the capabilities to sort using math and science, so the teacher may alter the goal for the students; instead of math and science experiments in seventh grade, they’re sorting clothes, or taking out the trash, performing functional skills.”


Some 141 kids in Monterey County have autism, or other developmental disorders such as Aspergers Syndrome that fall under the Autism Spectrum Disorder umbrella. These kids range in age from preschool to high school, and it doesn’t matter what district they’re in: If a child can’t learn in a mainstream classroom – or if he’s harming himself or others – then he’s referred to MCOE, which places him in one of its autism education programs at schools countywide.


While company owner Vicci Tucci has worked with MCOE for the last 20 years on its autism education programs, it’s only in the last decade that the county began implementing Tucci’s CLM curriculum. Even more recently – two years ago – MCOE brought the training in-house, and built a behavior assistance and support program that allows MCOE staff to “coach” teachers and provide autism education training using CLM previously taught by Tucci staff.


Both the anecdotal evidence and the numbers say it’s working.


At the end of 2009, the county operated 15 autism classes, says Michele Saleh, MCOE’s director of special education. Now there are 18, she says, adding that while CLM is “certainly a primary cornerstone in the methodologies employed,” it isn’t the only autism education model used. Comparing 2007-08 with 2009-2010, MCOE saw a 47 percent reduction in behavior incidents among autistic kids, and by the end of this year, based on current numbers, “I predict, when compared to ’07-08, we’ll see about a 50.9 percent reduction.”