Best Therapeutic Models for Autistic Children

About a decade ago I read a paper, which I have lost and would really like to find again. They took a group of mentally retarded children, ran each one past a panel of judges to evaluate them, then took all the children and put them in an acting class, not Shakespearean acting, but teaching them to "act normal", and then ran each one past the panel again. The increase in scores of every one of those children was impressive (I don't use words like skyrocketing, etc.)

I believe that is exactly the kind of class that is not included in schools for kids today, retarded or not, and that is exactly the kind of evaluation that others will do to them every day for the rest of their lives.

Now apply this to the post above. Imagine taking some or most of the children off in the direction of autism in schools and giving them two new required classes, one in decision making/theory in the world they will live in and the other in acting/interpersonal skills (really interpersonal warfare) that will let them carry out the decisions they have made. Both those are the things that those kids (and all of us) will face on a daily basis every day for the rest of our lives.

I think that has the potential of changing the lives of people in the next generation in that category more than teaching them history or algebra, despite how much it pains me to say that.

How can we test that idea to see if I am wrong or not? And if it works then how can we get that to spread faster and further than Covid and dramatically help 5-15% of kids today? And if it works for them we might even consider teaching it to more than the low hanging autistic fruit. Do you know normal people around who could have benefitted from being taught to make better decisions and learn better interpersonal skills?

If anyone knows of anything related to this idea, in support of or opposition to this, I would dearly like to see it. Thank you

Er, have you ever heard/read something suggesting an autistic child should socialize with only other autistic children, or is it something you came up with?

Please, write more about your thought process and the problem you're trying to solve. It greatly interests me, as the idea of restricting a child to only interact with autistic (and there are many different labels that would have the same effect) children is overwhelmingly alien to me.