Speech or Language Impairment
Eligibility Criteria
Speech or Language Impairment means a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation, language impairment, or voice impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.
A language impairment is present when:
(1) The child consistently exhibits inappropriate use in any of the structures of language (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) as measured by language sampling or other clinical tasks;
(2) The child’s language functioning is significantly below the child’s ability as measured by two (2) or more standardized language assessments.Significantly below is defined as two (2) standard deviations below the mean for children three (3) to five (5) years of age but not eligible for kindergarten, and 1.5 standard deviations below cognitive ability for children who are kindergarten age eligible and older;
(3) The language impairment adversely affects the child’s educational performance; and,
(4) The language impairment is not a result of dialectal differences or second language influence.
Professional Judgment:
A child may also be deemed eligible if the evaluation documents through formal and informal assessment that a language impairment is present even though the standard scores do not meet criteria A above. In such cases, sufficient data must be presented in the evaluation report to document the existence of the language impairment.
