Does He Qualify? {Guest Post by Jenna Rayburn}

Today I’m thrilled to be having Jenna from Speech Room News write about an important topic that can be confusing and overwhelming. Determining eligibility in the schools can leave you feeling pulled in all directions. Teachers say little Johnny can’t formulate sentences but test scores say different. Or socially, Gina is a mess but academically, she’s doing okay. Thankfully, Jenna also offers an exciting new course for SLPs starting their clinical fellowship year that addresses this and many more topics. Take it away, Jenna!

I’m so happy to be here to share some ideas with you about school speech and language therapy as you head back to work this fall. If you’re a new SLP or a new-to-the-schools SLP making decisions about which students qualify for services and which students do not can be difficult. There are three major components to consider when making eligibility decisions for IEP services in a school.

1. Consider the standard score.
2. Consider the educational impact.
3. Consider the level of intervention support.

When considering the standard score, you might live in a state with very specific eligibility criterion. Here’s a link from ASHA to find your state. Check with your Special Education department that you work in for any district standards. In general, a student with a mild impairment would not demonstrate significant concerns to qualify for services in the school setting. Students must demonstrate a moderate or severe delays to qualify for services. To determine the specific eligibility criteria, check with your department or state.

After you know your students score, you will work with your school team to determine the educational impact for that student. Some impacts might include:

Articulation: Ability to communicate ideas to peers/adults, confidence to work in groups or speak out loud and share ideas, or impacted spelling/writing due to speech sound or phonological errors.

Fluency: Inhibited classroom participation, poor peer relationships.

Language: All content areas impacted by auditory reception and processing of curricular material and following oral directions. Difficulty with comprehension of vocabulary and use of content words in writing. Lack of understand of figurative language impacts reading comprehension.

Work with the classroom teachers to identify any educational impacts. You must be able to indicate educational impact for students, but educational impact doesn’t always have to be grades. Consider a twice exceptional student with Autism. They may be gifted in the areas of math and science, yet need assistance with life skills concepts such as social skills, hygiene care, or organization of work. He might have wonderful grades, but you can still identify needs.

The last consideration before determining if a child qualifies for services is their level of instruction. A student who has had a lot of intervention support in small group from the teacher or individualized support for several months and a student who hasn’t had any specialized support should be regarded differently. Consider the extra small group support and how a student has reacted to the extra when you’re determining eligibility.

As you consider each of these points while determining eligibility, remember to balance your clinical judgement and the input from classroom teachers. Your clinical judgement is the best tool you have!

If you’re new to the schools this year, I encourage you to reach out to fellow school SLPs to make your first year a success. I’m excited to be mentoring SLPs who are new to the school system this year with online video courses. If you’re new to the schools visit SchoolSLP101.com or SLPcf101.com to learn how you can start the year off right!

Jenna Rayburn, M.A., CCC-SLP is a school-based speech language pathologist from central Ohio. Jenna has a passion for educational resource design and professional development for SLPs. On her blog, Speech Room News, she writes about current topics in the field, completes app reviews, and shares practical treatment activities. Jenna has presented on a variety of relevant topics to school-based speech-language pathologist including a presentation at the 2015 and 2016 American Speech-Language Hearing Association Convention.