UWM prof builds inclusive teams to study autism
Elizabeth Drame’s study of autism has taken her from classrooms in Wisconsin and New Orleans to Senegal, Ghana and Kenya.
And to a discovery: The challenges faced by autistic children and their families are similar, no matter where they live.
Kids are segregated because of their disability, even though they would learn more if they were not. Teachers often aren’t well trained. And there is a near constant worry about resources and acceptance.
“It’s very similar,” the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor told me. “And there often is a lack of community acceptance of the kids — the stares, the comments, can be very difficult.”
Drame, 46, grew up in Chicago and taught special education in Chicago Public Schools. She earned a doctorate from Northwestern University and came to Milwaukee in 1999, teaching for a time in Milwaukee Public Schools. She joined UWM in 2005.
Along the way, she became a big believer in collaboration. In her research projects, she involves a wide range of people from the beginning in the research process, including those with autism and their parents. Otherwise, she says, the results can be skewed.
“Instead of preemptively designing a study, you sit down with a community partner, identify a problem, and decide together what questions you want to investigate and find solutions to.”
Her interest in special education was sparked by an experience during her senior year of high school. She was required to complete a service project, so she did what many a high school student has done: She volunteered for what she thought looked like the easiest job — in this case, assisting Down’s Syndrome adults in a swimming class. It changed her life.
She developed relationships with the people in the class; they encourage her to overcome her fear of the water, and she ended up “realizing that all people can experience joy and a sense of accomplishment, no matter what level of skill they have in a particular area.
“I had never interacted with anyone with a disability before. It was a transformative experience for me,” she said. “I felt like the whole time I was learning much more than I was giving.”
Drame’s work led her to help families of color in Milwaukee find resources and support they need for kids diagnosed with autism. She created an autism spectrum disorders certificate program within UWM’s School of Education and spearheads the planning of the annual Milwaukee Urban Autism Summit, which will be June 23 this year at Penfield Montessori Academy, 1441 N. 24th St. It’s a half-day of work-
shops for those with autism, family members and supporters — a way to bridge the information gap many Milwaukee families face.
High cost of newspaper closures
Without the watchdogs, the cost of running government, it seems, goes up. That’s what a new working paper by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois-Chicago has found, City Lab reports. In regions where newspapers closed shop between 1996 and 2015, the costs for municipal bonds and revenue bonds increased. In the three years after a newspaper closing, municipal bond offering yields were up on average by 5.5 basis points; bond yields in the secondary market went up 6.4 basis points, the study finds. The researchers wrote: “Online news outlets are fundamentally changing the way that people consume news, and they are very likely to remain the dominant source for news consumption. However, these paradigmshifting news outlets do not necessarily provide a good substitute for high-quality, locally-sourced, investigative journalism.” Showing, perhaps, that maybe it takes an ink-stained wretch to keep folks honest.
David D. Haynes is the editor of the Journal Sentinel’s Ideas Lab. Got an idea for the Field Notes column? Email: david.haynes@jrn.com. Twitter: @DavidDHaynes