Iowa’s Area Education Agencies (AEAs) provide essential support for universal hearing screenings across their service areas. This includes supporting children under the age of 3 through Early ACCESS, Iowa’s early intervention program designed to identify and address developmental concerns—including hearing issues—at an early stage.
This program is free for Iowa families, and participation is entirely voluntary. For children under the age of 3 with a hearing concern, an Early ACCESS referral is completed and a hearing test is scheduled. Early ACCESS referrals can be made by parents/caregivers, medical providers, community organizations serving children and families, childcare providers, and school personnel.
Audiology staff at Iowa’s AEAs will perform hearing screenings for all Kindergarten and 2nd grade students, and any 1st graders new to school, in public school districts and accredited non-public schools across the state. These screenings are provided at no cost to districts/schools and parents. Districts and Head Start programs also have the option to pay a fee to utilize the AEA’s services for screening additional grade levels.
If a teacher or parent is concerned about a student’s hearing (and the student is not in Kindergarten or 2nd grade), they should contact the district’s AEA team for assistance. AEA staff will work through the disability suspected process as they do for other areas of concern.
Signs that a student may need to be referred for a suspected disability related to hearing may include:
- Difficulty following verbal instructions
- Frequently asking for repetition or clarification
- Misunderstanding words that sound similar
- Looking to peers to get cues on what to do before following instructions
- Asking for things to be louder
- Seeming to ignore or not respond to sounds/speech
- Complaining of ringing or buzzing in the ears
Please also consider that hearing may be having an impact on the student if there are academic concerns, especially in reading and writing, communication concerns or behavior concerns.