Speech Pathology

When AI Meets the ‘Expert’ SLP: The Blind Leading the Bot

Leave a Comment / AI, Evidence-Based Intervention, Speech Pathology / /

Ponderings on Evidence, Expertise, and the Future of Clinical Judgment in Speech Language Pathology Recently, I attended a webinar that discussed the best use of artificial intelligence with speech-language pathologists. It was marketed as a way to improve workload management and caseload efficiency. What I largely witnessed instead was a familiar problem, old habits becoming […]

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When College Isn’t the Answer: How to Protect Your Teen (and Your Wallet) from a Broken System

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Grade Inflation, Learning Disabilities, Life Outcomes, Parents, Speech Pathology, Young Adults / /

Every year I meet young adults who were diagnosed with language/ learning disorders (or who were never properly identified but clearly struggled their entire school careers). Many of them did what they thought they were supposed to do: they went to college. Their parents, desperate to give them a shot at success, took out loans

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Invisible Disability, Visible Damage: The Systemic Failure to Identify Language Disorders

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Discriminant Accuracy, Dyslexia and Reading Disorders, Independent Educational Evaluations (IEEs), Learning Disabilities, Psychological/Neuropsychological Assessment, Reading Programs, Special Education Disputes, Speech Pathology, Standardized Tests, Wilson, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell & Barton Comparisons / /

As a speech-language pathologist (SLP) specializing in language and literacy assessment, I’ve reviewed hundreds of educational, psychoeducational, and neuropsychological evaluations for students with complex learning needs. I repeatedly see students who are clearly struggling in the classroom, despite strong support at home, undergoing assessments that fail to identify their needs accurately. As a result, they

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Orton-Gillingham (OG) Alone Won’t Cut It: What the Research Actually Shows About Helping Struggling Readers

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Contextualized Language Intervention, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Dyslexia and Reading Disorders, Evidence-Based Intervention, Learning Disabilities, Parents, Reading Comprehension, Reading Programs, Special Education Disputes, Speech Pathology, Wilson, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell & Barton Comparisons / /

When it comes to reading intervention, few programs are as widely known, or as hotly debated, as the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach. Marketed as a lifeline for children with dyslexia and word-level reading disabilities (WLRD), OG is often touted as the gold standard. But is it? A closer look at the evidence tells a far more

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Selling Out Speech Pathology: How Profit-Driven Programs, Costly Certifications, and Low-Evidence Fads Are Undermining Evidence-Based Practice

Leave a Comment / Data Collection, Dyslexia and Reading Disorders, Evidence-Based Intervention, Parents, Speech Pathology, Wilson, Orton Gillingham, Lindamood Bell & Barton Comparisons / /

Speech-language pathologists claim to be a science-driven profession that follows the evidence. We cite evidence-based practice in our values, policies, and professional rhetoric. But in day-to-day reality, clinical decisions are often shaped less by research and more by revenue. The uncomfortable truth? Profit, not evidence, increasingly dictates what gets promoted, adopted, and normalized in our

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When the Wrong Professional Evaluates the Child: The High Cost of Misdirected Assessments

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Dyslexia and Reading Disorders, Evidence-Based Intervention, Learning Disabilities, Reading Programs, Special Education Disputes, Speech Pathology / /

In schools and private practices across the country, families of struggling students are told, “Get an evaluation,” as if identifying a diagnosis is the solution. But what happens when the evaluation is conducted by the wrong person, who either lacks deep expertise in language development or doesn’t treat the conditions they’re assessing? The answer is

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The APD Diagnosis Trap: How a Controversial Label Harms Kids in Schools

Leave a Comment / Auditory Processing Disorder, Evidence-Based Intervention, Learning Disabilities, Speech Pathology / /

Despite its clinical ring, “Auditory Processing Disorder” (APD) remains one of the most poorly defined, inconsistently diagnosed, and least useful labels used in school-aged populations. Not only is the diagnosis itself mired in scientific controversy, but its downstream effects in schools often do more harm than good. Recently, I conducted a professional poll on social

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When Skills Don’t Line Up: Making Sense of DLD and Grade Expectations

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Grade Level, Learning Disabilities, Parents, Speech Pathology / /

Determining a student’s “grade level” can be especially challenging when that student has Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) (Ziegenfusz et al, 2022). DLD is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that affects how children understand and use language, including vocabulary, grammar, following directions, processing questions, and expressing ideas clearly. Because language underpins all areas of academic learning, these challenges

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Gifted but Overlooked: Rethinking Evaluation for 2e Students

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Clinical Assessment, Life Outcomes, Parents, Social Pragmatic Deficits, Speech Pathology, Twice Exceptional/High IQ / /

In the world of educational assessments, there’s a long-standing reverence for the IQ score (Ritchie, 2015). Intelligence has often been seen as the gold standard for predicting academic success (Ren et al., 2015). However, in the case of twice-exceptional (2e) children—those with high IQs but significant learning disabilities—this traditional view can be misleading, especially when

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Acknowledging the Diagnosis: Why Denial Hurts More Than the Label Ever Could

Leave a Comment / Academic Success, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Dyslexia and Reading Disorders, Learning Disabilities, Parents, Speech Pathology / /

It’s a situation that sadly happens far too often. A parent or caregiver refuses to acknowledge a particular diagnosis, such as Autism, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), Dyslexia, or another neurodevelopmental condition. Sometimes it’s about fear. Other times, stigma (Turnock et al, 2022; Huang et al., 2023). In many cases, it’s rooted in the belief that

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