South Dakota lawmakers are hearing a bill that will include children with a hearing loss or those hard of hearing in the reporting criteria. Currently, that data is not collected after the age of five. Hb 1228 will require the state to count children with a hearing loss from birth through age eighteen or age twenty-one if still in high school.
Representative Erin Healy explained to lawmakers that currently the data collected to count the number of deaf or hard of hearing children in our state does not match up.
“Currently the department of education data shows that there are 100 children who are deaf or have hearing loss, yet the data for the sd school for the deaf shows approximately 600. The problem we have faced is not all deaf or hard of hearing kids are being accounted for due to a disability that is labeled as a primary.”
According to Healy, 40% of deaf children have another identifiable primary disability – which means many of these students are not receiving the services they need.
“The majority of this population are receiving a delay in literacy and language development and that is because they are not receiving appropriate educational services or resources since they are not being accounted. This bill will allow for our state to account for all deaf and hard of hearing student and by counting all students they can evaluate to see if there is enough instructional support for students that are hard of hearing.”
The South Dakota Department of Education spoke opposed the bill, telling lawmakers there are no tests that accurately gather the information laid out in the bill.
“So we don’t have any stateside measure for any students, general ed students, special education students, students specific to this population that we could report on we ould have to identify some type of an assessment.”
The measure passed out committee 9 to 6.