I had a teacher in some class who agreed with this, but also wanted to give kids an incentive to do well in the homework and quizzes. You earned points for each of those intermediate grades, but then the final was worth however many points were left over. So, if you’d aced all the homeworks, you went into the final with 50 points, and the finale was worth 0-50 points towards your total grade. If you hadn’t done any homework, the final was worth 0-100 points. If the first student scored 75% on the final, they got 87.5 for the course. If the second student scored 75%, that was their grade, 75%.
I liked it at the time, as it felt like you never stuff a hole you couldn’t get out of, so long as you learned the material by the end of the course. But if you passed in good homeworks, you had a cushion if you had a bad day for the final.
A broken leg is almost never a disability, in terms of the ADA. There would have to be some kind of unusual complication that made the normal experience of a broken limb much worse. Definitely not probably illegal, for whatever that’s worth.
Section 504 protects qualified individuals with disabilities. Under this law, individuals with disabilities are defined as persons with a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities. People who have a history of, or who are regarded as having a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, are also covered. Major life activities include caring for one’s self, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, working, performing manual tasks, and learning.
Notice walking is in that definition. All the student wanted was a couple extra minutes during passing period and a seat near the door while she had a cast. Since I was the 504 coordinator I had the power to force a 504 on the school if I wanted.
Yes and no. If a student gets a better grade on the final than the semester grade, they have shown they have understood the material by the last day and they have earned the better grade which I give them. However many students seem to think that under this system that they will somehow miraculously know the material at the end so the intermediate grade shows them either
You are not doing the work to understand the material OR
You do not understand the material at a passing/mastery level
So your F on the final is not a surprise and you really have no argument that I didn’t let you know you could fail the class.
And don’t forget the trade-off. If you had an A or a B then you showed you mastered the material so the final was optional if you wanted to turn your B to an A with no possibility that your grade goes down.
I mentioned this issue: we worry that without “stakes”, kids will procrastinate. I think we should address that problem specifically, as a cultural issue, rather than try to “force” compliance by using grades to compel behaviors.
As I have learned over my career, school policy and illegal policy are not mutually exclusive. And I’m sure one of our HR Dopers could say the same about company policy.
The solution is a good standards-based grading system but you know as well as I how many teachers will refuse to implement one. We did it at my school and it has worked absolute wonders.
Oh, I’m sure you have. That’s not the same as whether it’s probably illegal not to grant one for a broken leg. You can grant an accommodation that you aren’t legally required to, and not all temporary disabilities are the same.
A broken leg, without some specific complication that isn’t normally present, doesn’t rise to the level of substantially limiting major life activities. The school is obviously well within its rights to grant an accommodation to a student anyway.
Yeah, for sure. And certainly arguing against the idea that the spirit of federal disability law is that a school should let a student type, or have a note-taker, or that a cashier should get a stool, is not a hill I want to die on. In all of those situations, they should just get the thing they need.
Most of the time, though, when it comes to specific definitions of what is and what is not actually required, “normal” bone breaks are among the things commonly cited as “transitory and minor,” i.e. not rising to the level of a disability. People should be expansive in how they apply these requirements, and the guidance on all of these statutes encourages them to. But I don’t think it is true that more often than not, a court would say a school broke the law by not giving an accommodation for an arm or a leg in a cast.
edit: as an extremely scientific and robust experiment, I looked up a handbook about 504 to see if it gave examples. This one was the first result (very scientific), and it said this (p. 8):
An individual does not fall within the definition as someone regarded as having a disability if the
physical or mental impairment is transitory (that is, having an actual or expected duration of six
months or less) and minor.31 For example, if a person has a broken leg but is expected to fully
recover within six weeks, and the injury is considered minor, that person is not regarded as a
person with a disability even if others treat the person as if he or she has a disability.32
Note, while Section 504 does not require a school to take specific action if a
student has a physical or mental impairment that is transitory and minor,
Section 504 also does not prohibit schools from going beyond what the law
requires to assist a student.
The school district could, for example, allow the student to take a bus to
school, when the student with the broken leg typically walks to school, or
provide a pass to allow the student to use the faculty elevator–which is
typically off-limits for students–while the student uses crutches.
They’re talking about being “regarded as” being disabled, but of course by implication the example they’re providing is that a broken leg that’s expected to recover in a normal timeframe is not a disability.
So if a student ended up say, failing classes because they could not write quickly enough to complete tests as a result of a broken arm, the student would have no legal ground for complaint? That is wild to me. Thanks for doing the research on that.
In both cases, it might not be that HR is requiring more documentation than is required (in my limited experience), but rather that HR is requiring more documentation than is usually made and provided. The limited experience I have is both as an admin type for a Navy unit and as an HR manager for a small base oeprating and services company. In the former, a woman who was both Black and disabled had been in a job for over ten years and she was not competent at all in the job. Until her last supervisor (aka Officer-in-Charge), a Navy lieutenant arrived on the scene, none of the previous OICs documented her incompetence well enough. The last OIC, though, documented every disciplinary action and training session like she and the previous OICs were supposed to. It only took about six months to can the incompeteent civilian worker. For the latter case, I documented three cases from the outset, especially ensuring the nurse-on-duty’s drunkennes on duty was recorded. The other two cases were from official statements made in my presence to the base’s British authorities contradicting what the workers’ resumes said.
Uh, no. I’m still waiting for you to explain your scare quotes around “anxiety issues” and whether any of your examples, apart from the last, we’re actual real people you knew and worked with.
ETA: @kitap, I won’t defend the grad student in your father’s story, at this point I would only be making as argument an as to “should” versus “may be reasonably expected to” or some nebulous appeal to what student-professor relationships are or might plausibly have been like decades ago.
So, in your last story, the only one that you have is indicated is true, and not a made up amalgamation of rumors and gossip, do you believe that the student had a disability, or was faking one to get out of the test?
With the implication that this is a common thing, common enough that you asked for others to share their stories. Your thread title does disparage anyone with a disability, and your stories that you made up are intended to drive that point home.
No, but I do believe that people demanding accommodation beyond what is determined to be reasonable are far less common than people with disabilities being unable to get reasonable accommodation, and attitudes like the one you display in the OP is a large part of the reason why, both that people avoid seeking the help they need, and that help is denied.
I have worked with, employed, and been acquaintances with people with legitimate disabilities that have reasonable accommodation, and they are very aware of their rights and limitations under the ADA. The stories you chose to share only have people either falsely claiming disability, or claiming rights they would know they do not have(or do have, since you don’t know the extent of their disability or accommodations, so you may be complaining about people who are perfectly compliant with their employer’s accommodations under ADA).
What you are replying to is my answer to what I would have done in your situation.
What you said in the OP was that the student complained to the dean, not that you gave any assistance in navigating the appropriate student services to get the accommodations they need to be a successful student.
Be honest, do you believe that the student had a disability that should have allowed them extra time to prepare for the test, or do you think they were faking it to get out of taking it that day?
I thought I made it clear but if not I’ll clarify.
I have no reason to believe the student did not have PTSD. Whether or not he was lying or telling the truth I directed him to coordinate with the Student Services Office to get his accommodations. If he had come in and said I can’t take the test I would have treated just as if he hadn’t shown up viz. he could have made up the test at the next class.
My objection was that he studied the questions for 10 minutes THEN said he wanted to take the test later. To me, given the circumstances, he was trying to get an unfair advantage by memorizing the test questions and then go home and study, get help, have someone solve them for him (I give open note tests) or something.
At this point in the thread, I’d like to publicly thank ASL2.0, Sunny Daze and K9bfriender each for sacrificing their time, money and energy in getting a graduate degree in special education. I know we can all learn from their two decades in the field advocating for students with disabilities and developing accommodations when writing IEPs. I hope they have shown all of you that apparently hate people with disabilities and/or think everyone who claims a disability is faking it the depths of your ignorance.