Speech-Language Pathology Services in the Schools: A Follow-Up 9 Years Later

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the schools provide services to students with a variety of disorders and severity levels. This study built upon a previously published survey (Brandel & Loeb, 2011) to examine whether factors related to the place and time for services for students with language disorders had changed since the 2008 survey and to examine the differentiation of decisions made by the SLPs across the three severity levels. Method: Responses from 439 SLPs to an online national survey related to the place and time of services for students with language disorders were examined using regression in regard to the current factors impacting service delivery and the amount of variation in these decisions by the individual SLPs across the three severity levels. Results: Similar to previous findings, students participated in services primarily in groups outside the classroom once or twice a week for 20-30 min. Factors that continued to impact decisions were the SLP's caseload and year of graduation. Related to the differentiation of decisions, most SLPs made two different decisions across the three severity levels for where and how long to provide services, while almost one third made the same decision for the place. Conclusions: The results indicate that service delivery and the factors impacting it have remained relatively the same. While most SLPs do differentiate decisions related to time, less variation is observed regarding the place for services. Research is needed to clearly identify barriers and test possible solutions so that school practice can improve.