AL HB189

State Department of Education and Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services shall jointly select language developmental milestones from existing standardized norms to create a parent resource for monitoring deaf and hard-of-hearing children's expressive and receptive language acquisition from birth to age five.

Departments shall select existing tools or assessments for educators to use in tracking language and literacy development of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, appropriately formatted for both American Sign Language and spoken English modalities.

An advisory committee consisting primarily of deaf or hard-of-hearing experts in education for deaf and hard-of-hearing children shall provide input on language developmental milestone selection and educator assessment tools, with applications due by October 1, 2018.

Departments shall annually produce a report by July 31 beginning in 2019 comparing language and literacy development of deaf and hard-of-hearing children to hearing peers, disaggregated by communication modality (ASL versus listening and spoken language).

Act applies only to children from birth to five years old and does not prefer any specific language or modality or influence family decisions regarding primary language choices.