Reply to Wall Street Journal on rampant growth in percentage of college students with “disabilities”

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a teacher and I have a student whose accommodation is that she never has to turn anything in on time.  Ever.  Won't she make a great employee someday?  Just hope you're not the one who has to stay late and pick up the slack when she requests yet another extension.[/quote]

You sound horrible.  Hope you are not at my child's school.[/quote]

I'm a professor, and I will end up with--and have ended up with--the HS student who can't turn in a paper on time. I totally empathize with the teacher who posted. Far from thinking that this teacher is horrible, I would think long and hard as a parent about the necessity of certain accommodations. Parents are not doing their kids favors in the long term by maximizing the number of accommodations they think their child may qualify for. I also worry that parents are unintentionally destroying the confidence of their own kids. Call me a horrible professor, but the fact of the matter is that there is something terribly wrong with the way in which we are raising our children such that getting a paper done on time, even after they have had a month to write it, is causing so much stress and anxiety that it can't be done without drugs or an extension. [/quote]

As a parent, I can tell you why we had that accommodation.

My kid had medical issues that would cause him to miss school for a week or two.  MCPS was adamant that there was no requirement that teachers post assignments, or email assignments while he was out.  So he would return on Monday, to find out that there was an assignment due Wednesday that the other kids had known about for a week.  The teacher would then tell him that he could only pick up the assignment at lunch time, but when he'd show up to do just that, he'd find that the teacher had gone off to purchase lunch etc . . . Waiting wasn't an option, because he'd also need to make up 2 tests and pick up assignments from 3 other teachers during the same lunch period, and attend math tutoring because he didn't understand the material that he'd missed.  This was all while still recovering from a serious medical episode.

As to why not 50%, I can't imagine how that would work.  Who would choose which 50%?

[/quote]

FWIW, I always recommend to students, if they are able to do so financially, to take a semester off from college if they need to deal with medical issues (or other serious personal issues) that require them to miss more than a week or two of school per semester. There is no shame in taking time off to care for your heath, physical or mental. College is stressful enough as it is, and students don't eat well and get enough sleep. Focus on what's important. College will be there when you return.[/quote]

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