Excellent Ways to Reduce your Speech Caseload – Optimization Study

Reduce the number of kids on your caseload by identifying students that might be over- and under-represented. Save special education resources by targeting disproportional populations

Suggestions through professional development and online resources abound on how to reduce your speech caseload. So why do caseloads continue to grow exponentially and remain heavily weighted towards diverse students?

Many of the suggestions don’t address the underlying cause: too many children our our caseload who have communication skills that are within normal limits.

Commonly it is due to a misdiagnosis, delayed testing, or confusion about the influence of bilingualism or culutre.

We successfully help SLPs and entire districts reduce their caseloads by asking:

What is the source of the problem?
Is the problem at my school or across my district?
What should my SLP caseload look like?
Now that I know what the problem is, how can I rapidly fix it?

By understanding the source of disproportionality, we can reduce your speech caseload easily and effectively.

What is proportionality?

Proportionality means that the proportion of Black, Hispanic, White, Asian, and Pacific Islander students enrolled in Special Education is the same (or close to) the proportion of Black, Hispanic, White, Asian, and Pacific Islander students in the district.

Biinguistics can help you perform an analysis to reduce your speech caseload and provide an analysis of your district that identifies disproportionate groups, struggling campuses, over- and under- referral issues, and educator training needs.

Our customized district optimization study includes a complete analysis of current special education populations by ethnicity for your district and individual campuses that will help identify areas for improvement. The study also includes a detailed training plan based on the findings that will help your district improve the accuracy of identification of special education students.

Each report on what your school or district’s population looks like provides valuable information about which students might be over- or under-represented.

How do I tell if my school or district is over-identifying.

Here is a spreadsheet for you to undertake the analysis yourself. You will need a school’s population numbers for general education and special education broken down by ethnicity. Any school office should be able to give these to you. Then the spreadsheet will calculate the difference between actual and ideal proportionality.

Master-School-Special-Education-Proportionality Matrix

What if I am a Lone SLP But Still Want a Smaller Caseload?

We have been writing on how to reduce your speech caseload for a long time and have put together several essays and an online course. Check these out:

9 Reasons to Initiate a Speech Reevaluation Because a Student is On a Caseload and Shouldn’t Be

How Much Time Does It Take to Remove a Student from Your Caseload?

Are All of the Greatest Problems in Education Related?