Case Study Analysis of a Consultative Service Delivery Model with Students with Speech or Language Impairments

Introduction

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) defines a speech or language disorder as “a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment, or a voice impairment, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance” (§ 300.8[c] [11]).

According to the United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2012), there were 1,416,000 students with a diagnosis of a speech or language impairment (SLI) disorder in United States schools during the 2009-2010 school year. The incidence rate of this type of disability has changed little during the past 40 years. During the 1976-1977 school year, students with special needs who had a speech or language impairment diagnosis were at 2.9% of the total school population, and although this percentage has fluctuated between two to three percent over the years, it was also at 2.9% during the 2009-2010 school year. It should be noted here that these numbers only reflect students whose Individualized Education Pan (IEP) states that they are entitled to speech and language services only; it does not include students whose primary diagnosis is another type of disability but who may also require speech and/or language services.

According to Friend (2011), this type of disability tends to target more males than females, at a ratio of about 2 to 1. However, due to cultural and dialect differences, it is difficult to know whether speech and language disorders are more prevalent in one culture over another.

Students with speech or language impairments display a wide range of intellectual abilities. They can be gifted, have average intelligence, or if the speech and language disability is secondary to their primary disability of an intellectual disability (ID) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), these students’ intelligence can be below average. Despite their intellectual level, speech and language development affects the students’ academic abilities. In school, one is constantly interacting with other persons and being asked to read something and write about it. For a student with a speech or language disorder, these can be very difficult and challenging tasks (Friend, 2011).

Students with speech and language disorders struggle with reading due to their inability to sound out words, hear and understand the patterns in reading and how a passage should flow, or even distinguish between specific sounds. As reading is a huge part of any academic career, students with a speech and language disorder tend to fall behind their age- and grade-level peers (Friend, 2011).

Most students who have a speech or language disability are provided services within the general educational classroom by either a speech-language pathologist or a special and/or general education teacher, depending on their needs. Sometimes students with a speech or language disability will be removed from the general education classroom and taken to a resource room to work on specific skills like diction or articulation. In this case, the speech-language pathologist may have the student continue to practice these skills in the general education classroom, which means the special or general education teacher will have to help monitor the child’s progress.

This chapter will:

• 1.

  Discuss the needs of students with a speech and language disability and the challenges they face on a daily basis.

• 2.

  Discuss the causes and characteristics, educational placement and intervention strategies, and eligibility criteria for students with a speech and language disability.

• 3.

  Present and analyze two case studies that utilize a consultative service delivery model.

• 4.

  Anticipate future trends for students with a speech and language disorder.