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A fledgling program hopes to draw more newly minted SLPs to urban school districts in Dallas.
Like many urban school districts, the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) faces a shortage of speech-language pathologists. The district turned to contract companies to fill the gap, but was not happy with the results, which included inconsistencies in practice and large numbers of underidentified children in need of speech-language services.
So, based on educational consultants' recommendations, DISD personnel approached our clinical faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas and the UT Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders for help recruiting SLPs.
Together we designed three initiatives to encourage more UT Dallas graduates to apply to urban school districts:
* Create the "Grow Our Own" program, a communication sciences and disorders career pathway in the district's health sciences magnet program.
* Prepare UT Dallas graduate speech-language pathology students to work in an urban school district through specialized coursework, management of a typical urban caseload, and experience in partnership-developed practicum opportunities.
* Establish speech-language demonstration sites to improve literacy at three high-risk, low-socioeconomic elementary schools. Graduate students, supervised by UT Dallas faculty, implement the early literacy curriculum and gain unique practicum experience.
The DISD special education department budgeted the project and proposed using federal funds (Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Part B) to support it. The department demonstrated to DISD officials that encouraging UT Dallas students to work for DISD would save money by decreasing the need for contract SLPs. Funds would be used for graduate student stipends, for...