An educational audiologist is an audiologist who practices inside the education system, delivering hearing services to children in educational settings.
Federal IDEA regulations list audiology as a related service for children with disabilities, and the Educational Audiology Association defines educational audiologists as members of the school multidisciplinary team.
This hub explains the role, the employers, the route in and what the school calendar does to the caseload.
What is an educational audiologist?
The Educational Audiology Association (EAA) defines the role in its scope of practice, approved in August 2019: educational audiologists are members of the school multidisciplinary team who deliver a full spectrum of hearing services to all children, particularly those in educational settings.
The legal footing is federal.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), audiology is listed among the related services for children with disabilities (34 CFR 300.34).
Job titles vary.
O*NET lists Educational Audiologist among the reported job titles for the audiologist occupation (SOC 29-1181), alongside Clinical, Dispensing, Pediatric, Industrial, Forensic and Staff Audiologist.
EAA's scope uses school-based educational audiologist for audiologists who serve students as school employees or through contracted onsite services.
The definition describes a workplace and a population more than a separate clinical discipline.
The work reaches general-education classrooms as well as students with identified hearing loss — EAA's definition covers all children — and it runs on education law rather than a clinic schedule.
Students are children, so the role overlaps with pediatric audiology; much of what differs is the employer and the framework — a school system operating under education law rather than a clinical practice.
What does an educational audiologist do in schools?
IDEA's definition of audiology services reads like the job description.
Federal regulation spells out what the related service includes (34 CFR 300.34(c)(1)):
- Identification — identifying children with hearing loss, and determining the range, nature and degree of each loss.
- Habilitation — habilitative activities, named in the federal definition.
- Prevention — hearing-loss prevention programs.
- Counseling and guidance — for children, parents and teachers, per the federal definition.
- Amplification — determining the need for group and individual amplification, selecting and fitting an appropriate aid, and evaluating the effectiveness of amplification.
Each item lands differently in a school than in a clinic.
The counseling item puts educational audiologists in front of teachers as well as families, and the amplification item covers group as well as individual needs.
These services enter a student's education as related services under IDEA (34 CFR 300.34), so the work is framed by education law rather than a clinic appointment book.
EAA's scope frames the role broadly — a full spectrum of hearing services to all children — so the brief reaches beyond the students who already have an identified loss.
Who employs educational audiologists?
EAA's scope names two service routes for school-based educational audiologists: serving students as a school employee, or through contracted onsite services.
The employee route runs through school districts.
The contract route runs through organizations that hold school contracts — BLS notes that some audiologists, such as those contracted by a school system, travel between multiple facilities.
Two datasets bear on the setting, and they measure different things.
BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook credits the educational services industry as a whole with 10% of audiologist employment — an industry share, not a count of school audiologists alone.
ASHA's 2025 membership profile counts 6.6% of ASHA-certified audiologists working in schools, and a separate 5.6% in colleges and universities.
One share comes from federal employer-side data and the other from a survey of ASHA-certified professionals, so read them side by side rather than combining them.
On pay, BLS's OEWS survey for May 2025 recorded 860 wage-and-salary audiologist jobs in elementary and secondary schools nationally, at a median annual wage of $97,790 (occupation 29-1181, audiologists).
The schools row is a small cell with high relative standard error, and the figure covers wage-and-salary employment only.
The occupation 29-1181 spans every setting — O*NET lists Educational Audiologist among its reported job titles — so that row sizes the setting, not the specialty.
For specialty-level pay, ASHA's 2025 educational audiologists survey reported a median full-time base salary of $87,513 (25th percentile $73,000; 75th $101,000); 90.3% of respondents were paid primarily an annual salary and none primarily on commission.
That is a base-salary median from a survey of ASHA-certified audiologists — a different measure from the BLS wage-and-salary row above, so read the two side by side rather than combining them.
ASHA notes many school audiologists are on 9–10 month contracts and does not adjust the figure for contract length.
How do you become an educational audiologist?
The route in runs through audiology itself: train as an audiologist, hold the audiology license your state requires, then build the school-facing specialty on top.
Confirm current licensure requirements with your state board before you plan.
Degree routes are a state-board question — which audiology degrees a state accepts is governed by that board's current rules, so confirm them directly.
The school-specific layer is credentialing on the education side, and it is state-specific.
Wisconsin, for one, issues a school audiologist educator license.
It requires 50 hours of supervised school-setting practicum (or equivalent employment as a school audiologist) plus a doctor of audiology degree — or a master's in audiology earned on or before August 31, 2018 from an ASHA-accredited program; that date applies to the DPI educator license, not to Wisconsin's audiology license.
Which states beyond Wisconsin require an education credential was not verified in our research, so treat it as a check-with-the-state step rather than a settled rule.
Train and license as an audiologist
Complete an audiology degree your state accepts and meet your state board's licensure requirements — the board defines the accepted degrees and the current requirements.Confirm the school layer
Ask your state education agency and licensing board whether delivering related services in schools requires an education credential beyond the audiology license. Our research verified that requirement only for Wisconsin.Build the pediatric and school-facing background
School practice serves children, and IDEA's audiology definition starts with identifying children with hearing loss, so pediatric and screening experience lines up with the work.Consider the specialty certificate
The Educational Audiology Association and the American Board of Audiology jointly offer the Certificate Holder–Educational Audiology (CH-EdAud), an online self-study course. ABA certificates are voluntary, US residents need a state audiology license to earn one, and association membership is not required — and the certificate is a certificate program, not a state school credential.Apply where the routes land
Employee roles sit with school districts and their HR pages; contracted onsite roles sit with the organizations holding school contracts.
Rules differ by state
What is the school calendar and caseload like?
School audiology work runs on the school calendar: ASHA notes many school audiologists are on 9–10 month contracts.
Audiology enters schools as a related service under IDEA (34 CFR 300.34), not as a year-round clinic service.
Caseload has survey data, with limits.
ASHA's 2025 educational audiologists survey asked full-time school-based clinical audiologists for their average monthly caseload: the median was 60 students (25th percentile 40, 75th 88; n = 130).
That counts students seen in a month — it is not a students-per-audiologist district ratio.
Recommended ratios are scarce in our sources.
A 2007 survey of state education agencies (Richburg & Smiley, Journal of Educational Audiology, published 2009) found only five states reported a recommended FTE audiologist-to-general-student ratio, and our research found no current national caseload standard — treat any per-student ratio you encounter elsewhere with caution.
Travel is part of the picture for some: BLS notes that some audiologists, such as those contracted by a school system, travel between multiple facilities, so one role can cover several campuses.
Among the structural factors behind any one workload: the number of campuses served, whether the district employs its audiologist or contracts the service, the size of the special-education population and where the school year stands.
Ask any employer how the calendar and coverage map work in practice — the answer varies from district to district.
Find educational audiologist jobs
Where a posting appears follows the service route.
Employee roles are listed on school district HR pages; contracted onsite roles appear under the organizations holding the school contracts.
HearingHires collects hearing care roles in one place — browse educational audiologist jobs to see what is live today.
For school applications, lead with the school-facing evidence: pediatric casework, screening program experience and amplification work.
On the employer side, districts and agencies that need to hire an educational audiologist can post an opening through the HearingHires hiring hub.
Career information, not licensing, legal, medical, clinical, billing or coding advice — confirm requirements with your state's audiology licensing board and education agency.