Q: In the school district where I used to teach, I attended many meetings concerning children with special needs. Many of the kids in question were said to be "on the [autism] spectrum." In 15 years I witnessed the number of supposedly autistic children go from practically zero to enough to fill a special education class at almost every one of our 30-plus schools. A good number of these children were eventually mainstreamed into my class, and I felt then and even more strongly now that they were wrongly diagnosed.