(Some deaf children, says Bryan Eldredge, figure either they'll die before they become adults or will turn into a hearing person — since they've never really known a deaf adult. Wilding, an assistant professor at UVSC, says some deaf adults have been so unexposed to the kind of "incidental learning" that happens from communicating with their peers that when they get together with other deaf people, there are questions like "what is bank interest?" and "how do you buy a car?")

The mainstream deaf program at Millcreek Elementary and the bi-bi program at JMS are two of several options in an education system that is complicated enough to require a score card.

Briefly, the options go something like this: About 1,000 deaf Utah schoolchildren are in programs that fall under the auspices of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, a state agency; about 600 deaf students are in programs run by the various school districts; other deaf students may be doing so well they don't qualify for such "special education" programs.

The USDB has a very small residential program for deaf students. It also now oversees the JMS school, which merged with USDB two years ago. Most of USDB's students, however, are mainstreamed in either oral programs such as the one at Millcreek Elementary or in something called Total Communication (a combination of lip reading, speech, listening, ASL and other forms of sign language). Most of the children in both groups have some sort of amplification device, says Liz Parker, director of deaf programs for the central division of USDB. Deaf high school students, and children in many of the state's outlying school districts with a small deaf population, are assigned interpreters who sign.

The point, says Parker, is that each child is an individual, and no one communication strategy works for all.

Many school districts and schools for the deaf around the country have turned to strategies such as Manual Coded English and Signed Exact English, says Lawrence Fleischer, chairman of the Deaf studies department at California State University-Northridge and president of the USA Deaf Sports Federation. And that's a big mistake, he says.

"It's an artificial language," Fleisher said. Whereas ASL has its own grammatical structure, MCE and SEE try to use English word order and English equivalents of words. "It doesn't work," he says.

Julie Eldredge gives this example: the word "outstanding." In ASL, there's a simple sign. But in MCE she would have to sign the word for "out" and then the word for "stand" and then "ing." That not only takes longer, she says, it's confusing.

"But who controls deaf education? Hearing people," says Fleischer. "They'll keep what they feel close to. I'm hoping for open dialogue about what's working. But we're powerless."