The Average Salary of School Speech Therapists

About 50 percent of speech pathologists work in schools.

Speech therapists are more appropriately called speech pathologists or speech-language pathologists. They work with people who have speech problems. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of speech pathologists work in schools, primarily helping special-education students. Speech pathologists will assess, diagnose, develop treatments and work to prevent speech-related disorders.

The Job

Speech pathologists work with people who can't speak or have trouble speaking. Some possible problems might be stuttering, a harsh voice or an inability to produce sounds. These problems can arise from things like surgery, developmental delays, cleft palate and cerebral palsy. Speech pathologists develop an individualized treatment plan to teach patients how to make sounds and improve their voices. School speech pathologists work with teachers, interpreters, and parents to develop and implement the speech-improvement plan.

Education

A master's degree is generally required to become a speech pathologist. Though it is not always required, many states require graduation from an accredited program as a licensing requirement. If you want to be credentialed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Assocation, you will need a master's degree. In 2009, 240 colleges and universities had accredited programs.

Employment

In 2008, there were 119,300 speech pathologist jobs in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Educational services employed 48 percent of the speech pathologists. Other employers include nursing care facilities, home health care services, individual and family services, outpatient care centers and child daycare centers. Only nine percent of speech pathologists are self-employed and many of them contract with schools and other places that also hire speech pathologists as employees.

Salary

The average salary of a speech pathologist was $62,930 a year in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle 50 percent earned between $50,330 and $79,620. However, school speech pathologists tend to earn less than speech pathologists employed elsewhere. The average annual salary for a school speech pathologist in 2008 was $58,140, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

References

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Speech-Language Pathologists