New York City stops hearing tests for schoolchildren

From the Staten Island Live in N.Y.:

The city is ending its decades-long practice of giving hearing tests to schoolchildren, leaving speech and auditory experts concerned that students will fall behind in their academics.

The policy, implemented this fall, applies to all kindergarten and first-grade students in public schools, and is based on federal recommendations. Testing for older children ended in 2005.

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, one in every 20 school-aged children may have mild hearing loss, and more than one-third of them are expected to fail at least one grade at school. Representatives learned that about 7 percent of New York City schoolchildren fail the hearing test each year.

Though that may only be a handful of students, local teachers said eliminating the service would be a great detriment to young children.

"Imagine I'm talking to the student at a conversational level and he's hearing me as though I'm whispering him," said Gaye Wiesner, a speech improvement teacher at PS 44, Mariners Harbor. "Now you have all that classroom background noise with radiators and trucks and movable furniture like tables and chairs squeaking constantly. The student may miss a lot."

Ms. Wiesner has heard of cases where children have been wrongly categorized as special education, simply because their hearing impairment went undetected. Students have also been left back a year because their inability to hear class lessons caused them to fall behind.

"If you manage to miss it in kindergarten or first grade, then all the way through elementary school, this kid never gets a chance to have an education," she said. "If he misses a third or 25 percent of what the teacher is saying, you can't get that back."

Details on how much the screenings cost were not made available.

Health Department officials said they decided to discontinue testing over the summer based on a report from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which determined that hearing screenings do not necessarily lead to better educational outcomes and that most children fail a screening because of wax or fluid in their ears. Officials also said they rely heavily on newborn screenings to catch a hearing impairment.

The problem, experts say, is that newborn screenings test only for severe, and not mild, impairments. Additionally, relying on newborn screenings leaves out a large segment of the population.

"Staten Island has a lot of parents that are new to the country," said Dr. Mary Goodacre, AuD CCCA, of Staten Island Audiological Services in Grasmere. "Parents who bring their kids into the country later on, they're not being screened."

Jim Potter, the director of government relations and public policy for ASHA, said the federal recommendations are based on an outdated 1996 report, which relies on even older data.

"It is at best disingenuous that the Bloomberg Administration is utilizing antiquated references for the purpose of canceling the hearing screening program," he said in a letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Potter is working on a three-pronged approach to: Reinstate vigorous hearing screenings for kids of all ages; educate children about hearing loss, such as listening to loud music through earbuds, and promote better classroom acoustics