Public Law 99-457 has renewed interest in providing preschool educatio
n for hearing-impaired children. It is not clear, however, whether we'
re ready for this mandate to expand services to an ever-younger popula
tion and its families. This study presents a "snapshot" of the trends
in preschool programs and of the availability of programming to studen
ts in various parts of the country. We obtained lists of programs from
a sample of state level special education offices, and then sent the
programs detailed questionnaire. The returned surveys provided a snaps
hot of the instructional approaches used in many preschool programs an
d indicated that there may still be some problems in the availability
of preschool programming and in the ability of programs to uniformly p
rovide the sorts of quality comprehensive services mandated by the law
.