Educational programs should be held accountable to produce outcomes that are socially valuable, functional, and acceptable. This is a core value at the Autism Model School.
One way we stay true to this mission is by testing the programs and approaches we use through research projects.
Partners from outside of AMS play a key role in evaluating the effectiveness of our services.
For example, we’ve teamed up with researchers from the University of Michigan, the May Institute, and Bowling Green State University.
Research Projects and Publications
- Low vs. High Tech Tools to Teach Activity Schedules: An Examination of Effectiveness and Preference1 (November 2025) — “Results indicate either low- or high-tech presentation of activity schedules are effective at changing behavior. Additionally, participants endorsed both presentations of the activity schedules. Our findings point to the importance of considering input from Autistic individuals before implementing interventions.” Study participants used IDAPT, the school’s own patent-pending software platform.
- Implementing Virtual Interview Training for Transition-Age Youth: Practical Strategies for Educators2 (March 2023) — “Transition services and Pre-ETS are an integral part of special education for transition-age youth. Rita and Travis is a technology-based intervention with a growing research base that focuses on developing job interview skills through an internet-based job interview simulator with automated feedback. This column reported eight strategies to help inform future implementation of Rita and Travis within school-based Pre-ETS.”
- Adventures in Direct Instruction Implementation: The Devil Is in the Details3 (July 2021) — “This article tells the story of how a public charter school serving students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) adopted Direct Instruction (DI) as their primary form of instruction. The journey from recognizing the need for evidence-based curriculum focused on academic skills to integrating DI on a daily basis was outlined using a common implementation framework. We measured results of the implementation process on student outcomes using reading scores obtained from the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA-II Brief). Results for 67 students who participated in a DI reading program for at least 2 years suggest that the implementation of DI led to significantly improved reading scores; with some students demonstrating greatly accelerated rates of learning for their age.” (Learn more about DI.)
- McGuire, S. N., Vostal, B., Anderson, E. J., Vidovic, J., Thomas, A., & Reed, L. (2025). Low vs. high tech tools to teach activity schedules: An examination of effectiveness and preference. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-25-07110-5 (Online First Publication) ↩︎
- Sherwood K, Smith MJ, Ross B, Johnson J, Trautwein A, Landau M, Hume K. Implementing Virtual Interview Training for Transition-Age Youth: Practical Strategies for Educators. Interv Sch Clin. 2024 Mar;59(4):281-286. doi: 10.1177/10534512231156879. Epub 2023 Mar 1. PMID: 38884047; PMCID: PMC11178335. ↩︎
- Vidovic JL, Cornell MC, Frampton SE, Shillingsburg MA. Adventures in Direct Instruction Implementation: The Devil Is in the Details. Behav Anal Pract. 2021 Jul 14;14(3):839-855. doi: 10.1007/s40617-021-00616-1. PMID: 34631387; PMCID: PMC8458515. ↩︎