Opinion Essay on Disability Accommodations

[Hegemony]

I have to agree that there is no medical basis for most of the accommodation requests, espcially those that require extra time on tests and exams. All that's needed is a letter from a doctor certifying that certain accommodations are required; no other medical information such as diagnostic tests or other proof of disability needs to be provided to the disability office.

I think what you mean is that you feel that insufficient medical evidence is required, rather than that there is no medical basis for most requests. We'd need further study to see what evidence is behind doctor's letters.

My son has "slow processing," which means that although he generally arrives at the right answer, making the calculations (whether mathematical, logical, or whatever) simply takes him longer. They calculate processing speed on the same kind of scale as IQ, where 100 is average and 90-110 is the larger spread of average. His processing speed is 81 on that scale. Establishing this and other data cost around $1600 from a neuropsychologist in his freshman year of high school. Then when he started college, they required an official assessment that was more recent than that, so we paid around $1600 again for a new assessment that came to the same conclusions. And yet ... a lot of his teachers have visibly scoffed when he arrives with his accommodations statement from the accommodations office — so much so that now he is reluctant to ask them. He absolutely refused to, this year. He just took a test in his college sociology class, and got a poor grade because he ran out of time and did not finish. Because his profs have been so grudging about his accommodations that he didn't want to deal with the scorn any more.

So that's another thing that happens when people make sweeping statements that students with accommodations are frauds and don't really deserve them.

[bio-nonymous]

Fraudulent or not, I think in many cases we are setting these students up for failure in the workplace.

The bolded is my concern. I'm not a professional in assessing whether students have disabilities and I am not going to accuse anyone of fraud or say they were misdiagnosed. But it seems to me that we are doing more harm than good by being endlessly accommodating.

I teach future health care professionals. I often wonder how those who need 1.5x time and distraction-free environments will do in the workplace. Insurance only pays for so much time with the patient, sometimes there are emergencies where you need to make quick decisions, sometimes it is complete chaos (trauma arrival in the ER) and there is no quiet place to think. To be perfectly truthful I think that not all careers are meant for all people. To be endlessly accommodating to the point where the public may be harmed or ill-served for inclusion may not be the best solution. Perhaps if you are 2 meters tall and weigh 120 kilos you can't be a jockey...even if that is/was your childhood dream career.

[marshwiggle]

Fraudulent or not, I think in many cases we are setting these students up for failure in the workplace.

The bolded is my concern. I'm not a professional in assessing whether students have disabilities and I am not going to accuse anyone of fraud or say they were misdiagnosed. But it seems to me that we are doing more harm than good by being endlessly accommodating.

I teach future health care professionals. I often wonder how those who need 1.5x time and distraction-free environments will do in the workplace. Insurance only pays for so much time with the patient, sometimes there are emergencies where you need to make quick decisions, sometimes it is complete chaos (trauma arrival in the ER) and there is no quiet place to think. To be perfectly truthful I think that not all careers are meant for all people. To be endlessly accommodating to the point where the public may be harmed or ill-served for inclusion may not be the best solution. Perhaps if you are 2 meters tall and weigh 120 kilos you can't be a jockey...even if that is/was your childhood dream career.

I've always thought of the examples of basketball player and jockey to illustrate that anyone can't be anything they want; being well-suited to one will definitely make one ill-suited to the other.

[dismalist]

Fraudulent or not, I think in many cases we are setting these students up for failure in the workplace.

The bolded is my concern. I'm not a professional in assessing whether students have disabilities and I am not going to accuse anyone of fraud or say they were misdiagnosed. But it seems to me that we are doing more harm than good by being endlessly accommodating.

I teach future health care professionals. I often wonder how those who need 1.5x time and distraction-free environments will do in the workplace. Insurance only pays for so much time with the patient, sometimes there are emergencies where you need to make quick decisions, sometimes it is complete chaos (trauma arrival in the ER) and there is no quiet place to think. To be perfectly truthful I think that not all careers are meant for all people. To be endlessly accommodating to the point where the public may be harmed or ill-served for inclusion may not be the best solution. Perhaps if you are 2 meters tall and weigh 120 kilos you can't be a jockey...even if that is/was your childhood dream career.

I've always thought of the examples of basketball player and jockey to illustrate that anyone can't be anything they want; being well-suited to one will definitely make one ill-suited to the other.

Well, yes and no. You can make all kinds of people winners at some stage by changing the rules, e.g. maximum average height for a basketball team and minimum average weight for jockeys. Watch them succeed!

But life post-high school or college is not like that. Rules change spontaneously through learning. If colleges cheat on their grading mission, say through grade inflation or the subject at hand, college becomes devalued. Watch the college wage premium erode.

Cheating benefits the cheater, but it destroys cheating institutions.

[the_geneticist]

I have to agree that there is no medical basis for most of the accommodation requests, espcially those that require extra time on tests and exams. All that's needed is a letter from a doctor certifying that certain accommodations are required; no other medical information such as diagnostic tests or other proof of disability needs to be provided to the disability office.

I think what you mean is that you feel that insufficient medical evidence is required, rather than that there is no medical basis for most requests. We'd need further study to see what evidence is behind doctor's letters.

My son has "slow processing," which means that although he generally arrives at the right answer, making the calculations (whether mathematical, logical, or whatever) simply takes him longer. They calculate processing speed on the same kind of scale as IQ, where 100 is average and 90-110 is the larger spread of average. His processing speed is 81 on that scale. Establishing this and other data cost around $1600 from a neuropsychologist in his freshman year of high school. Then when he started college, they required an official assessment that was more recent than that, so we paid around $1600 again for a new assessment that came to the same conclusions. And yet ... a lot of his teachers have visibly scoffed when he arrives with his accommodations statement from the accommodations office — so much so that now he is reluctant to ask them. He absolutely refused to, this year. He just took a test in his college sociology class, and got a poor grade because he ran out of time and did not finish. Because his profs have been so grudging about his accommodations that he didn't want to deal with the scorn any more.

So that's another thing that happens when people make sweeping statements that students with accommodations are frauds and don't really deserve them.

Instructors saying "I don't want to/I don't believe you" to a student with an approved & reasonable accommodation is a way to gate-keep and close doors. 

[Hegemony]

I teach future health care professionals. I often wonder how those who need 1.5x time and distraction-free environments will do in the workplace. Insurance only pays for so much time with the patient, sometimes there are emergencies where you need to make quick decisions, sometimes it is complete chaos (trauma arrival in the ER) and there is no quiet place to think. To be perfectly truthful I think that not all careers are meant for all people. To be endlessly accommodating to the point where the public may be harmed or ill-served for inclusion may not be the best solution. Perhaps if you are 2 meters tall and weigh 120 kilos you can't be a jockey...even if that is/was your childhood dream career.

So maybe extended time is not suitable for all situations or occupations. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed for any. There are plenty of occupations in which taking a little longer to think things through is not a life-or-death situation. And many of those occupations, fairly or not, require a college degree. When I teach — I am in the humanities — what I care about is whether my students know and can think about the material, not whether they can do it within a small number of seconds. And yes, my own exams are designed so that everyone has plenty of time to think about their answers.

[marshwiggle]

One point that hasn't been made explicitly yet is that accommodations undermine the idea of universal design. Any efforts made to prevent people from being restricted by certain conditions are completely ignored by automatically requiring specific accommodations for certain people, regardless of whether those particular conditions have been incorporated into the design.

[lightning]

The article talks about over-worked disability officers in under-staffed offices. That sounds like our place. Our office will process the accommodations, but rarely does anyone from the office follow-up. Following-up would actually require real work and working with the faculty member and the student.

I had a student, whose accommodation is a notetaker. Of course, the disability office won't provide one. The faculty member is supposed to provide one. I gave the student a departmental iPad with a really cool audio-to-text transcription app. The student has never once used it. I guess the student wants a note-taking servant, instead of an app that is more reliable and serves the function of note taking better than some rando-student's notes. Will the disability office ever follow-up? Of course not. They are too overworked.

[kaysixteen]

A thought-- how is American universities' policies and behaviors relative to disability accommodations similar or dissimilar to practices in similar countries?

[Langue_doc]

I have to agree that there is no medical basis for most of the accommodation requests, espcially those that require extra time on tests and exams. All that's needed is a letter from a doctor certifying that certain accommodations are required; no other medical information such as diagnostic tests or other proof of disability needs to be provided to the disability office.

I think what you mean is that you feel that insufficient medical evidence is required, rather than that there is no medical basis for most requests. We'd need further study to see what evidence is behind doctor's letters.

My son has "slow processing," which means that although he generally arrives at the right answer, making the calculations (whether mathematical, logical, or whatever) simply takes him longer. They calculate processing speed on the same kind of scale as IQ, where 100 is average and 90-110 is the larger spread of average. His processing speed is 81 on that scale. Establishing this and other data cost around $1600 from a neuropsychologist in his freshman year of high school. Then when he started college, they required an official assessment that was more recent than that, so we paid around $1600 again for a new assessment that came to the same conclusions. And yet ... a lot of his teachers have visibly scoffed when he arrives with his accommodations statement from the accommodations office — so much so that now he is reluctant to ask them. He absolutely refused to, this year. He just took a test in his college sociology class, and got a poor grade because he ran out of time and did not finish. Because his profs have been so grudging about his accommodations that he didn't want to deal with the scorn any more.

So that's another thing that happens when people make sweeping statements that students with accommodations are frauds and don't really deserve them.

We aren't given any information about the nature of the disability, as that would be a violation of the students' right to privacy. The only information in the accommodation letter is the accommodation itself, such as time and a half for exams, or additional days for assignments. Accommodations are legally binding, so I haven't encountered any instructor ridiculing or otherwise dismissing the need for accommodations. I had one student in an online class needing extra days for the weekly low-stakes assignment on the discussion board. While the rest of the class had from Monday to Friday evening to complete these assignments, this particular student had to be given the assignment the previous Friday. In addition to opening extra folders for Stu's asignments, I also had to excuse Stu from the required peer reviews as not only did Stu need extra days for submitting the draft, but Stu would also need extra time peer reviewing classmate's draft with the result that classmate wouldn't get the peer-reviewed draft in time to revise and submit the essay or research paper in question. Stu was way behind in all the assignments--I think Stu wisely decided to withdraw from the course toward the end of the semester. This was an example of an accommodation that was counter productive, as students had at least a couple of weeks to complete their drafts.

[apl68]

A thought-- how is American universities' policies and behaviors relative to disability accommodations similar or dissimilar to practices in similar countries?

Good question. 

[eigen]

Extended time is very common at my institution. As I said in the other thread, my students very rarely end up using all of the allotted time, let alone the extended time. But I don't see that as a problem, or as proof that it was unnecessary or undesirable. In fact, it seems pretty harmless to me. The same seems true of distraction-free environments for testing.

It won't be harmless if they start applying it to labs. Labs are often scheduled back-to-back. If any student with an accommodation gets more time for a lab, then that means labs can't be scheduled back-to-back because if even one student in the lab has an accommodation, the lab needs extra time.

This is a "tragedy of the commons" situation, where it's only workable as long as the number of people needing it is very small; as more people get it, the system breaks down.

Not really. In labs, a double time accommodation usually means the student is enrolled in both lab sections, and continues from one to another. Or at least this is the recommendation in chemistry labs, maybe other fields are different?

Regardless, accommodations must be "reasonable" and the cost shouldered by the institution: so if a lab instructor or TA has to stay longer, they need to be paid for that extra time, just like extended time exams need to be proctored by someone not the instructor.

Having to shift the entire schedule for labs due to a student is not reasonable, having them enroll in two back-to-back labs is.

[kaysixteen]

Another thought-- while many if not most disability accommodations requests are legitimate, some clearly are not, and some would clearly rise to the level of Cadet Bone Spurs fraud on the part of the docs or other professionals who sign off on them.  Are any such cases of professional fraud ever punished by anyone in any way?

[Hegemony]

One point that hasn't been made explicitly yet is that accommodations undermine the idea of universal design. Any efforts made to prevent people from being restricted by certain conditions are completely ignored by automatically requiring specific accommodations for certain people, regardless of whether those particular conditions have been incorporated into the design.

I don't think this is true. Universal design (which I have usually seen applied to things like readings and syllabi, rather than course structure) that is universally inclusive would mean that there is no need for accommodations, rather than "undermining" accommodations. For instance, instead of giving two hours to take a two-hour test, give students 24 hours and make it a take-home test. But where universal design is not possible, then accommodations should be available.

It's not as if no one has ever thought any of these issues through, you know.

[spork]

We are simply seeing the end product of the K-12 disability accommodations infrastructure:

https://ctmirror.org/2024/09/29/cant-read-high-school-ct-hartford/