The acoustic environment of a classroom is a critical factor in the psychoeducational and psychosocial development of children with normal hearing and children with hearing impairment. Inappropriate levels of classroom reverberation, noise, or both can deleteriously affect speech perception, reading and spelling ability, classroom behavior, attention, concentration, and academic achievement. Poor classroom acoustics have also been shown to negatively affect teacher performance (Crandell, Smaldino, and Flexer, 1995). This article discusses several acoustic factors that can compromise communication between teacher and child. These acoustic factors include (1) the level of the background noise in the classroom, (2) the relative intensity of the information-carrying components of the speech signal to a non-information-carrying signal or noise (signal-to-noise ratio, S/N), (3) the degree to which the temporal aspects of the information-carrying components of the speech signal are degraded (reverberation), and (4) the distance from the speaker to the listener.