As you are probably aware, currently there exists a different framework for identifying individuals with autism educationally and medically. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's eligibility criteria doesn't differentiate between different types of autism and uses to term "autism" to broadly label students who meet the state's autism eligibility criteria. Medically, pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) is a broad umbrella diagnostic criteria that is utilized and 5 subgroups of PDDs are differentiated: autism, Asperger's syndrome, Rhett's syndrome, Childhood disintegrative disorder, and PDD-NOS (not otherwise specified). Educationally the term "autism" is used broadly, medically it is used to described what some think about as "classic autism".
This difference in how individuals are described and labeled educationally vs medically is about to change as the newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (which provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders) plans to not differentiate among different subgoups and use the term autism spectrum disorder as the broad umbrella diagnostic label. There has been much discussion about this proposed change and many fear that those individuals who met criteria for various subgroups of PDDs (in particular Asperger's Syndrome) may not be identified within the proposed DSM-V's diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder. Confused? Check out this link for more discussion and a video that outlines the proposed changes in DSM-V.
