September 2001

Proposed Principles to Guide Accomodation of Student Disabilities

Richard Harshman

As the new fall term begins, many of us
will be receiving forms from university councillors requesting that we
grant special consideration to students with “disabilities.” This has continued
to be a controversial issue on many university campuses. SAFS’s member
Richard Harshman proposes some principles to consider when we make these
decisions. He hopes that these might serve as a starting point for the
development of a set of guidelines, ones that SAFS can offer to university
faculty and administration, hopefully for adoption in university policy
and in printed explanatory materials distributed by the university to students
and faculty. We invite you to comment on his proposals and/or to offer
your own ideas on the issue.

PROPOSED PRINCIPLES
TO GUIDE ACCOMMODATION OF STUDENT DISABILITIES

1) Principles

1. The central goals of academic accommodation are:
   1. Equal learning opportunities for disabled students.
   2. Accurate academic assessment of disabled students.
2. The central principles guiding selection of appropriate academic accommodation are:
   1. That it will not compromise the University’s primary missions of quality teaching, valid assessment of students, free intellectual exchange, and discovery of new knowledge;
   2. That it will be fair to all students; it will not give competitive advantages to either disabled or non-disabled students;
   3. That it will use a method suitable for the specific disability and the specific academic characteristics of the course.
3. Consequently:
   1. It is appropriate to accommodate limitations in any abilities that are incidental to course performance goals and that seriously interfere with equality of learning opportunity and/or chance for accurate assessment of the disabled student.
   2. It is inappropriate to accommodate limitations in those abilities that are integral to evaluated course performance goals and/or that legitimately play a significant role in determining differences in evaluated performance of non-disabled students.
   3. The decision of whether it is appropriate to accommodate a particular student’s disability, and, if so, how best to do so consistent with the academic objectives of a course, can only be determined by fully informed consultation between the student and the course instructor.

2) Issues that arise when applying these principles

The learning stage vs. the assessment stage of accommodation

1. Accommodation to remove
   obstacles to learning by disabled students is at least as important as
   (and perhaps more important than) accommodation to ensure valid academic
   assessment. (‘Learning-stage’ accommodation of disabilities is also relatively
   uncontroversial, because facilitation of learning is part of the university’s
   overall teaching mission and because it does not usually raise issues of
   fairness to other students, or questions about maintenance of academic
   standards. But it can be difficult to carry out. Perhaps for this reason,
   it is often neglected and “replaced” with adjustments of testing conditions,
   etc. This is to be avoided.)

2. Accommodation to remove
   obstacles to valid academic assessment of disabled students (by changing
   conditions of testing, or essay requirements, etc.) should be of a kind
   that would increase validity of the assessment. It is important to try
   to remove obstacles that would otherwise lower the student’s mark below
   that reflecting her/his true knowledge and ability. It is quite inappropriate
   to reduce validity of the test score by establishing conditions that inflate
   marks of accommodated students above what their actual abilities and achievements
   in the course would warrant.

   The purpose of “assessment-stage”
   accommodation is not to raise a student’s mark from the true level of accomplishment
   and ability attained in the course up to some hypothetical level that might
   have been obtained without a disability. Such a counterfeit improvement
   is neither an adequate nor a fair replacement for aid that should have
   been given (when possible) to produce a real improvement at the learning
   stage.

Relationship between the disability and the course

3. The source of a disability
   (whether inherited or acquired through trauma, whether due to medical problems
   or of natural origin) is less relevant to issues of accommodation than
   (a) how seriously the disability impacts the student’s learning and performance
   in the course, and (b) the relationship between the nature of the disability
   and the nature of the course. In this regard, it is important to distinguish
   course-integral and course-incidental abilities.

   1. Course-integral abilities
      are either evaluated abilities or components of evaluated abilities. Examples
      might include spatial or mathematical ability as part of problem solving
      ability for students in a physics course, or verbal fluency for students
      in a law or creative writing course. These abilities are part of “what
      a course is about,” part of what is evaluated when student performance
      is assessed, and are part of what is implicitly ‘certified’ when a student
      gets a high mark in a course.

      Individual differences in
      the level of course-integral abilities contribute naturally to differences
      in evaluated achievement of non-disabled as well as disabled students.
      It would therefore be unfair to provide accommodation for very low levels
      of such abilities and not also provide accommodation to students who are
      in the lower part of the normal range of individual differences in these
      same abilities. Both groups are at a natural disadvantage when competing
      with students at the higher end of the range.

      Accommodation of differences
      in course-integral abilities also undermines academic standards. It attenuates
      the degree to which differences in marks reflect differences in level of
      achievement in a course. For example, recently a UWO student was granted
      extra time on a statistics exam in part to accommodate for a spatial and
      numerical disability. Such accommodation might make it possible for this
      or some other student to pass a statistics course and yet be unable to
      understand and properly use any statistical information presented in subsequent
      courses. Such ‘accommodation’ is actually a disservice to the student.
      It is also a disservice to the University and to the community of people
      who depend on valid assessment of students by universities (such as admissions
      committees for graduate school, potential employers, future medical patients
      of clinically trained students, etc.).

   2. Course-incidental abilities
      are unrelated to the abilities and accomplishments that are the evaluated
      achievement goals in a course. Course-incidental abilities might include
      verbal fluency in a physics course or spatial and mathematical ability
      in a law or creative writing course. Incidental disabilities that interfere
      with learning or assessment (e.g., coordination difficulties) should be
      accommodated whenever feasible. (However, some course-incidental disabilities
      may be impossible to accommodate, e.g., blindness for a student in certain
      visual arts courses, or deafness for a student in certain music appreciation
      courses.) The broad principle underlying these distinctions is that the
      disability accommodated and the method of accommodation should not compromise
      the main missions of the university. Consider, as an analogy, a request
      for accommodation of serious vision disability by an applicant for a job
      as bus driver. The potential employer should not, and would not, be required
      to modify assessment methods to accommodate such applicants, because to
      do so would compromise one of the essential missions of that organization:
      safe transport of customers.

The instructor’s role, and
the need for fully informed consultation between instructor and student.

5. Because of the potentially
   complex and subtle considerations involved in determining appropriateness
   of accommodation in a specific class, and in designing the best method
   of accommodation, it is essential that the instructor be fully informed
   of the nature of any student disability offered as grounds for a request
   for accommodation. This may require entrusting the instructor with confidential
   information concerning the student’s disability, in which case, he or she
   will be held responsible for protecting that confidentiality.
6. In the accommodation process,
   it is the role of the instructor to (a) contribute expertise on the nature
   of the course objectives, exam properties, etc. and thus on which abilities
   are course-integral vs. course-incidental, (b) speak for and defend any
   academic values that may need to be considered, (c) if needed, raise any
   issues of fairness to other students that may need to be considered, and
   (d) act as a key participant in any balancing of values that may be necessary.
   For this reason, the instructor should have primary authority in the decision
   of determining appropriate academic accommodation.

3) Some examples of difficult
cases

Difficult borderline cases
such as ‘learning disabilities’ challenge us to make fair and reasonable
decisions about what is course-integral and what is course-incidental in
what is often a gray area. Furthermore, there are many different kinds
of ‘learning disability’ to be distinguished.

Consider dyslexia, a specific
difficulty in reading resulting from subtle perceptual/processing problems.
Although reading plays an important role in transmission of information
in almost all university courses, the actual course content and learning
or performance objectives are seldom, at the university level, about a
student’s ability to read; reading is not “an essential and integral part
of evaluated student excellence and accomplishment in the course.” Consequently,
learning-stage accommodation of this type of disability would be quite
appropriate. In addition, some assessment-stage accommodation could be
needed in order to be sure that an exam accurately measured the student’s
knowledge and course-integral abilities.

On the other hand, limitations
in the ability to pay attention and concentrate, and/or to remember certain
kinds of material, might not be incidental to evaluated achievement in
a course. Significant differences in these abilities are arguably part
of the natural individual differences that non-disabled students also have
to acknowledge and live with. Great care must be exercised when deciding
whether or not, and if so how, to accommodate such learning disabilities.

There are also difficult
questions concerning effectiveness and appropriateness of specific methods
of accommodation. A key one concerns the currently standard practice of
allowing more time on exams. When is extra exam time an appropriate accommodation,
and when is it inappropriate because either it is not effective, or is
not adequately related to the nature of the disability? When would a certain
increment in time be too much, and thus provide such a strong “accommodation”
that it is unfair to other students?

Some initial thoughts might
be as follows. Such accommodation would seem uncontroversial when the test
is relatively ‘unspeeded,’ so that added time would not substantially enhance
the scores of non-disabled students. However, on a highly ‘speeded’ exam,
where added time would make a substantial difference in the scores of non-disabled
as well as disabled students, the granting of 50% more time might seriously
overcompensate for a particular disability and give the disabled student
an unfair advantage. Often, it is only the instructor who is able to adequately
judge whether an exam is highly speeded or not based on knowledge of the
nature of the exam and the ability level of students in the course.

Added exam time would seem
appropriate when the resulting improvement in the disabled student’s score
is due to removal of incidental obstacles that slow the student down (e.g.,
poor motor coordination and hence difficulty writing). However, problems
of fairness and academic standards may arise when the request for extra
time is because of a student’s difficulty in concentration or inability
to effectively “focus” his or her attention (perhaps as a result of brain
injury). The ability to concentrate and marshal one’s thoughts so as to
solve problems effectively or state arguments clearly is often an integral
part of evaluated student performance at any university.

(A final note: some recent court decisions may invoke principles similar
to those raised above, in particular the distinction between what are here
called integral vs. incidental (dis)abilities).