Working in schools as a speech pathologist for more than seven years, I have treated a lot of kids. One of my duties is to decide whether or not speech services continue to offer an educational benefit for students. I have found that most parents want their children to continue in speech therapy even after the school-based speech path thinks that the student needs to be dismissed. It’s okay to disagree. In fact, if you are in need of support about a recommendation from your school, feel free to email me. But here’s why for many cases, parents should agree with the speech pathologist’s recommendation:
- IEP Goals have been met. “IEP” stands for individual education program and it is what qualifies a student for speech therapy under the umbrella of “special education.” Your child is no longer eligible for speech therapy when their goals have been met. Although that’s a wonderful result of successful speech therapy, some parents cannot adjust to the idea their child will no longer receive speech therapy. Don’t be concerned! It’s a good thing.
- Speech difficulties are not producing an adverse educational effect. If “Sue,” an A student, has a lisp (the “s” sound produced between the front teeth), technically she doesn’t qualify for school-based speech therapy. The communication disorder has to have a measurable impact on his/her education. Oftentimes single sound errors do not cause a child’s grades to drop. If parents consider those errors still serious, (click to read more)they can pursue private speech therapy outside of the school at their own expense. Some school-based speech pathologists treat those errors in RTI (response to intervention) groups without an IEP. Talk to your school’s speech pathologist for more information.
- Lack of motivation. Motivation is an important factor in your child working hard to change their speech. If the child has lost interest in speech therapy, it will affect their progress and their prognosis or the predicted outcome of a diagnosis.
- Lack of progress. A student can work hard, but sometimes their progress can stagnate. If there is no progress, it means that the speech pathologist treatment is no longer effective or that the student’s abilities have reached a plateau. The reason dismissal is the right choice is because there is no benefit to the child. Moreover, if the student is being pulled out from the classroom, there might be missed instruction that would negatively impact the child’s academic progress.
- More time in the classroom is better for the child’s education. In most of the schools I’ve worked, students receive speech therapy in what is called the “pull out” model or the students are taken out of their classroom to receive speech therapy away from their classroom. That means that the student misses part of classroom-based instructional time. Most schools forbid the speech pathologist from scheduling students during “specials” or music, library, computer, art, and physical education. So regular classroom time is the only time left for students to receive speech therapy. The student needs to have a communication disorder severe enough to warrant missing out on classroom instruction. If not, then dismissal from speech makes sense.
- A student’s behavior or attention is making treatment impossible. If a student cannot focus on the speech lessons, he or she will not be able to learn how to produce an “l” or how to use irregular past tense verbs. A lot of speech students also have other learning or behavior problems so most speech pathologists have enough training or skills to be able to handle the occasional acting out or not listening. But severe behavioral issues including aggression and defiance will make it impossible for the student to learn new and sometimes challenging speech and language skills. Those kinds of kids can be dismissed from speech temporarily until their behavior issues improve. Some school districts offer the option of consultative speech services or that the speech services remain on an IEP without any direct minutes.
If you feel like your student is being unfairly dismissed from speech therapy, contact me. I’m available for consultation.
I had your same experience, of parents wanting placement and wanting continued placement. This is one reason why school SLPs might tend to over-identify children for speech services. Teachers side with parents and it takes good communication with administrators to build understanding about IDEA standards. Good post. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for commenting! What you said is too true. I appreciate you stopping by!
My son is in 4th grade and missing instructional time 2x a week. There have been several occasions when one of the teachers had the students take a quiz on a video that my son did NOT view in its entirety. I sent an email regarding it, and had no reply, than sent another one today since he performed poorly on the quiz. He is a great student, but it is hard do best effort on a quiz based on video you miss portions of IMHO.
Any suggestions welcome. My son’s eligibility for speech is phonological/articulation.
That’s terrible! First, I would reach out and contact the speech path. Since you’ve already made several attempts to contact the teacher, you could email the principal too.
It might be helpful to suggest a different time of the day. Maybe he can receive speech therapy as soon as school starts or right before it’s time to go home since most likely formal instruction is not taking place.
Every school that I’ve worked at requires that the student receive speech therapy during their class time and not during a “special” like gym, music, library, computer, or art (depends on the school what is offered). However, you could request that he miss library once a week for speech therapy. No offense to the librarian being that I LOVE the library, but it might be a perfect time for speech to happen.
One of the districts I worked at pushed speech paths to work inside the classroom with students. You could ask the speech path about providing services within the “regular education setting.” I found that to be particularly hard with students with articulation deficits and normally when I provide services in a classroom, it’s usually a special education setting and I lead a lesson for a group of students with similar concerns.
The goal with your son is to get him to produce correct sounds inside the classroom and in the world. Maybe the speech path can watch the videos with your son and then ask him questions afterwards, making sure that he knows to answer them using his best speech sounds. It would be helpful for you to know how much support he needs to be successful with his speech sounds. Does he need two sessions outside of class? Maybe one session in class and one out of class would be better. I see kiddos getting significantly better around the fourth and fifth grade so maybe he doesn’t need as much time drilling outside of the class.
That’s all I can think of right now. Good luck!