College Humor

With the passing of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, schools across the nation are now required to offer services that were before considered a luxury for students with disabilities. One such service is for speech and language therapy.

In a memorandum to all Florida schools special education directors, Chief of Exceptional Education Bambi Lockman wrote that federal officials found that the Florida schools had failed to provide speech and language-related services to children with disabilities. She further noted that the officials stated that these services were necessary as outlined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, without which the children could not fully benefit from their special education.

Speech and language therapists help children who have trouble pronouncing words due to physical disabilities, such as a cleft palate, autism, or hearing impairments. Other children have problems expressing themselves, and some children cannot speak at all. Therapists help these children overcome a wide range of obstacles that interfere with their ability to learn.

Throughout the Florida schools there are nearly 93,000 children who are considered speech or language impaired. That is 18 percent of all Florida schools students. Under the disabilities act, other students also will qualify for speech and language services, such as those children who are learning English as a second language. The demand for therapists by the Florida schools already is greater than the availability of such professionals, and officials expect that demand to grow even more once services are more readily offered.

Speech and language therapists have been in short supply in the Florida schools, as well as across the United States, for many years. Experts blame the shortage on the increasing demands for therapists by school districts across the nation and the considerably low pay offered, compared to the amount of education, certification and licensing required by the schools.

With the disabilities act, school caseloads have ballooned and are overwhelming. Many students, who would not have qualified for such services in the past, are now eligible and taking advantage of the free school-provided services.

The Florida schools require speech and language therapists to hold a minimum of a masters degree, as well as be certified and licensed to practice within the state of Florida. Unfortunately, the Florida schools therapists are paid little more than a beginning teacher, who is required only to have a bachelors degree and who may or may not be certified in their area of expertise. For example, the Florida schools St. Lucie School District pays therapists only $8,000 more than a beginning teacher.

The majority of speech and language professionals are moving to work in medical and hospital settings, for private companies, or to go into business for themselves as private contractors. In the St. Lucie area, a speech therapist can earn upwards of $100 an hour as a private contractor. As with many teachers over the years, therapists are opting for higher wages and better working conditions.

This makes competition for the Florida schools very difficult. The St. Lucie School District had a difficult time hiring 16 additional speech therapists last year. This year, they prepared to meet the demand by hiring aides and college graduates, who are still working toward their masters degrees and certifications.

The Florida schools Palm Beach County School District has gone beyond the federal requirements and will have an even higher demand for therapist services. They developed a plan that offers extra speech and language services to all of their elementary-level students with disabilities.

With language and speech playing a crucial role in a students development and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requiring the Florida schools to provide such services, therapists are much in demand and the shortage is even greater. This means that until the Florida schools can hire all of the needed therapists, the services offered will be limited to how many therapists each school district can manage to hire.

Patricia Hawke is a staff writer for Schools K-12, providing free, in-depth reports on all U.S. public and private K-12 schools. Patricia has a nose for research and writes stimulating news and views on school issues. For more information on Florida schools visit http://www.schoolsk-12.com/Florida/index.html

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In order to stadardize the system of producing teachers in every state in the country the Educational Teaching Service (ETS) which headed the conduct of a specialized examination wherein the applicant must be able to accomplish it with a passing grade of (660) based on the National School Psychology Examination. The grade that you garnered at the end of the exam is valid for nine years preceding the date when you took the examination, beyond those years your exam grade would expire therefore requiring you to take the exam again. The series of Praxis formulated by the Educational testing Service contains the Psychologist test which has a code of 10400.

Knowing what ETS really is

It is a non profit organization that pursues to give quality and to provide a fair play education for every person in the globe. They are aiming to assist the students to comprehend, the teachers to be effective propagators of information and the parents to ascertain the academic and intellectual advancement of their child. This is done by ETS by listening to the commentaries of the academe, the parents, and the critics. As they continue to foster this they were able to discover the needs of their students and the learning institutions. ETS was able to enact on their goal by formulating state-of-the-art and innovative services and products.

The Praxis Series of Examination

It is a series of assessment examinations that the states utilize in order to measure the capacity of a person who would want to be a teacher. The prospective teachers are to by undertake a procedure much like a licensure examination that would certify that their skills were appropriate for the job. The test is composed of three parts. Praxis I examination calculates the fundamental educational skills of an applicant while the Praxis II examination aims to gauge the universal and subject detail knowledge and instructing skills. Praxis III examination evaluates the classroom routine of the applicant.

Praxis I has the title of Pre-Professional Skills Assessment (PPST), the exams consists of tests calculating the basic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. This part could be taken in two set-ups whether paper-based or computer-based.

The computer-based examination is presented by a scheduled time in testing centers. Usually, an applicant takes two hours to finish the exam but the definite time for each portion of the exam is quite longer. The reading exam with 46 questions has been allotted 5 minutes, same way with mathematics while writing has 44 questions with an allotted time of only 38 minutes. The applicant is also required to compose an essay for 30 minutes.

The computer-based exam is also presented in a combined examination which will be distributed at a single session. If you are to take the combined examination there will be four parts in your exam theres reading, arithmetic, multiple-choice composition and the essay writing. The proctor will give you a 15-minute break in between the arithmetic and writing part of the exam. This test is undertaken longer than the original one because it usually lasts almost five hours.

The paper-based examination has allotted an hour for a 40-questioned exam in reading and mathematics while the essay writing and the multiple-choice writing segment both have 30 minutes each. Of course, your score could be determined by the number of correct answers that you have, dont you worry because there will be no deductions for incorrect answers with your praxis exam.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written many articles on the Praxis II. For more information checkout http://www.teachingsolutions.org.