Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education – Criteria for Eligibility in the Educational Category of Language Impairment

A child exhibits a language impairment when:

1. The child consistently exhibits inappropriate use in any of the structures of language (e.g., morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) as indicated by language sampling or structured clinical tasks
2. The child’s language functioning is significantly below the child’s cognitive abilities as measured by two or more standardized language assessments. Significantly below is defined as two standard deviations below the mean for children 3 to 5 years of age but not eligible for kindergarten; and 1.5 standard deviation below cognitive ability for children who are kindergarten age eligible through and older
3. The language disorder adversely affects the child’s educational performance
4. The language disorder is not a result of dialectal differences or second language influence
   
   

NOTE ON PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT: A child may also be deemed eligible if the evaluation documents through formal and informal assessment that a language deficit is present even though the standard scores do not meet the criteria in B above. In such cases, sufficient data must be presented in the evaluation report to document the existence of the language deficit.

Local Resources

• Center for Hearing & Speech
• Eardley Family Clinic for Speech, Language and Hearing at Fontbonne
• Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic at St. Louis University
• Walker Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders
  
  

State Resources

• Missouri Speech-Language-Hearing Association
  
  

National Resources

• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
• Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America
• Center for Parent Information and Resources