Why Lower Standards for School-Based Speech-Language
Pathologists and Audiologists Will Not Meet the Needs of
Students
A lowering of personnel standards in schools puts the
educational success of school children with speech, language,
and hearing disabilities at great risk.
Bachelor's degree personnel lack both coursework in
the broad range of communication disorders as well as
supervised experience in providing services to school
children. These inadequately trained, lesser qualified
personnel are not prepared to assess and treat students with
special needs to meet the goals of Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Undergraduate training programs of today are
pre-professional. They have refocused their curricula to
provide an adequate foundation of basic science and basic
communication processes coursework in order to prepare
students for the demands of graduate studies.
Bachelor's level personnel may be incorporated into
delivery of selected services, but only under the direction
of qualified personnel with enough supervision to ensure that
services are consistent with accepted standards of
practice.
Lowering personnel standards in IDEA'04 is not
consistent with Congress' intent in passing the revised
law. Although Congress granted the states greater flexibility
in establishing personnel standards under IDEA, House and
Senate conferees were clear that they expect state educational
agencies to establish rigorous qualifications for related
service providers that ensure that students with disabilities
receive the appropriate quality and quantity of services.
Lowering standards to a bachelor's degree does not
demonstrate such rigor.
Allowing less rigorous personnel qualifications in the
schools will create a two tiered system of services to
children. Students who receive services in other settings (e.g.
private practice or hospitals) would receive services from
fully qualified master's degree professionals with national
certification and/or state licensure while children in school
settings would receive services from less qualified
personnel.
Hiring personnel who are not adequately prepared may have
negative financial consequences.
Using less qualified personnel to assess and treat
students with special needs may increase the cost of special
education due to over-identification or misidentification of
students who do not need services or who remain in treatment
a longer time.
Children who receive Medicaid speech-language
pathology services in the schools must receive them from
personnel who meet Medicaid provider requirements which
include a Certificate of Clinical Competence or its
equivalent. The less qualified bachelor's level personnel
could only provide services to Medicaid students under the
direction of a qualified provider. Without Medicaid billing,
schools will lose a significant source of federal funding and
will have to look to state and local budgets for increased
funding. If these funds are not available, school programs
and personnel may need to be reduced.
Lowering qualifications to fill vacancies is shortsighted
and not in the best interest of children's education.
Vacancies should be addressed by improving working conditions,
reducing unmanageable caseloads/workloads, providing salary and
hiring incentives, implementing loan forgiveness programs,
instituting mentorship programs for new hires, and implementing
other recruitment and retention strategies that are provided
for classroom teachers but are often overlooked for related
services personnel like audiologists and speech-language
pathologists.