The Use of Immitance Screening by the Kansas City, Missouri Public School District

The identification of children who have hearing problems has always been an important concern of the Kansas City, Missouri School District. However, owing to PL 94-142, improved educational placement procedures, public awareness, referrals from school personnel, legal courts, and other factors, the urgent need for a more comprehensive and improved audiologic school program became apparent. Following a pilot study in 1978, a p p r o x i m a t e l y 2 0 , 0 0 0 e l e m e n t a r y students (grades K-6) were evaluated in a hearing screening program incorporating pure-tone and impedance audiometry during the 1979-80 school year. One of the major drawbacks reported in the literature concerning immittance screening in the public school setting has been overreferral . We found immit tance screening to be highly practical and cost effective with modified ASHA guidelines (1979). Owing to the large numbers of students screened and the limited number of personnel, our auditory screening project was not undertaken as a controlled research study. A flexible approach was developed whereby 20,000 students could be screened so that all educationally and medically significant hearing problems could be identified.