Like you, my best grades in law school were in the classes that had other than 100% in-class finals. Never could figure those out. Which is weird, as I had aced undergrad PolSci with heavy reliance on essay tests. But I’ve never identified myself or been diagnosed with a significant mental illness.
I’ve long been critical about many aspects of US law schools and the bar exam, but don’t care to hijack this thread.
I’ve also been critical of the mentality of many high pressure workplaces - such as private law firms, accounting firms, medical residency… But, again, not about to go there in this thread, or to go into why some people seem to react differently to different stressors.
Nah - that’s definitely not it. But again, not this thread. Her opinion, which I have nothing to contradict, is that the caliber of students in her classes has consistently declined over the 30 years she has taught at this community college. A tremendous lack of critical thinking. Not improved post-COVID and with ChatCPT.
Admittedly, the college has low (no?) admission standards and the admin seems mainly interested in filling seats. The students are definitely not the cream of any crop. The admin regularly pushes presenting the classes as fucking entertainment for students who don’t care to actually read material and listen to lectures - pretty much the only way to effectively present Business Law. Role playing and games don’t cut it.
The many non-native English speakers pose additional challenges for essay tests/assignments. I wonder if non-native English students could get additional time…
The author herself was in a wheelchair (unsurprisingly: I don’t think you could write a good book about the difficulties a wheelchair-user would face without firsthand or close secondhand experience), and wrote the book based on her own experiences. I wouldn’t be surprised if the non-accessible college was an amalgam of difficulties she faced at multiple different schools (the gravel path at one, and the poor public transportation at another, say). But then, I also wouldn’t be surprised if there were several schools with a major gravel path, either.
I was giving a final exam once. The exam was scheduled for a two-hour block of time, but I didn’t enforce a time limit. It was the last exam of the day. Most students finished well within the time allotted, but one student stayed for at least an hour past the end of the allotted time, still working on it—and by “working,” I mean things like wracking his brain, second-guessing himself, agonizing over it, waiting for inspiration to strike, and making very little actual progress.
After that, I decided that it would be in the best interest of students like that, as well as my own, if I set a hard limit on the amount of time a test-taker could have. But I did design my exams so that time pressure shouldn’t be an issue, and a student who knew what they were doing would have plenty of time to complete it.
I did have some students who had disability accommodations that allowed them extra time on tests, but it was always 1.5 or 2 times the amount of time the rest of the students got. Unlimited time was never an option, and we were specifically told we had to specify an amount of time for students who were taking tests in the alternate location. They certainly weren’t open and staffed 24/7, which they’d have to be to allow literally unlimited time.
My husband had a student (when he taught math at Columbia University) who had an accommodation to take as long as he wanted. All his tests were take-home, because it was unreasonable to expect my husband to sit around for hours every time he assigned a quiz.
That student passed in incredibly long, rambling, unfocused work. The accommodation was not serving him well, in my husband’s opinion. But it wasn’t my husband’s call. He just bitched about grading those exams.
Time limits on tests are good. Really tight time limits that prevent the typical student from checking his work are not good, and tend to be the unwanted side effect of either trying to test too much or just having poor judgement as to how long a test will take.
My wife has a student this semester who consistently turns in such work. Think of 3 -4 long paragraphs for a question that called for a 2-3 sentence short answer. My wife has taken off points for failure to follow instructions, “Give a short answer…” But this student keeps turning in these overly long answers. Weird. This student has no reported accommodations.
I’ve never dealt with accommodations at the college level, but if it works like it does in K-12, the teachers would certainly at least have a say in the matter. Around here, the student’s accommodation committee has to include at least one of the student’s regular classroom teachers, and ideally all of them, in order to give feedback like that.
Nope, doesn’t work like that in college. Instructors are notified at the start of term which of their students are entitled to what accommodations (e.g., how much extra time on tests, distraction-limited environments for tests, use of note-taking device in class or accompaniment by note-taking assistant, whatever).
The students don’t have accommodation committees: they just have to comply with whatever requirements Accommodative Services specifies for proving and documenting their confirmed need for accommodations, and the instructor’s only responsibility is to make sure that those accommodations are provided. Instructors do not provide feedback on how well the accommodations are serving the student, and in fact trying to do so might be a violation.
This article may offer some insights. One of Maté’s points is “Given a setting of increasing inequality and economic insecurity; growing isolation; the breakdown of social supports such as the traditional community and extended family; the fraying of the social safety net; proliferating social hostility; and the addictive siren call of digital media – given all this, stress on families and young parents is increasingly intolerable.” And that stress has all kinds of effects on people.
I’ve seen documentation for accommodations from several colleges. The standard approach is for the student and/or a medical care provider to fill out a short form, basically providing short answers to questions like:
Does Student x have diagnosed medical conditions which require accommodation?
What are those conditions?
What accommodations are appropriate given the student’s condition?
Sometimes the student simply presents a vague-ish letter from a care provider offering diagnoses and saying accommodations are warranted, after which either the student fills out the form listing specific accommodations, or it appears to be completed by a faculty member. Little apparent effort to obtain 3d party corroboration, delve into the health professional’s treatment relationship with the student, clinical observations, response to treatment, etc.
Each instructor simply is notified which students on their roster have accommodations, and they can look up and see which accommodations they have to provide. I’m not entirely sure, however, whether instructors are required to affirmatively tell students with accommodations that they are allowed, say, extra time, or whether they simply have to grant that if the student requests. And I know that the instructor is not allowed to ask the reason for such accommodations, the underlying medical condition, etc.
My impression is that health care providers vary WRT their willingness to support such requests.
Also, IME many (most?) colleges have specific staff whose jobs are addressing the needs of students needing/wanting accommodations. I may be overly cynical, but I suspect it is not in the interest of such staff members to minimize the number of students with such needs. I’m sure they tend to have noble intentions. But the larger the problem, the easier it is to request greater funding and resources…
I think you may be overly cynical. At least in the contexts I’m familiar with, Accommodative Services staff are DROWNING in the demands made on testing spaces and scheduling, staff time, etc. “Requesting greater funding and resources” is not as easy as it sounds: HR budgets are very tight, and reducing the number of “accommodees” would make life a lot easier for everybody who deals with accommodations.
My cynicism had its genesis in something I was taught many years back studying American government - that one of the highest and most constant goals of any bureaucracy is to increase its purview and therefore its budget/staff/resources.
I have found that pretty darned true throughout my 40 year career in government. When is the last time you heard of ANY administrative office voluntarily requesting a SMALLER budget and fewer staff next year? Or asking to be disbanded because they had accomplished their goals? Saying they need fewer staff, and their staff are adequately compensated? I acknowledge that many - if not most - bureaucratic entities believe they are doing something worthwhile. But make no mistake, increasing their size and influence is on the short list (certainly not the SOLE goal) of just about every bureaucratic entity.
Your experience is that academia is immune to power struggles? Not mine.
Maybe Accomodative Services departments are an exception. But I doubt it. Sure HR budgets are tight. But what better way is there to encourage increasing the HR budget or increasing the slice of that budget that goes to Accommodative Services than offering generous estimates of the number of people needing accommodations, and identifying a steeply increasing trend for such services.
And IMO this also goes to the diagnosis and prescribed treatment for various maladies triggering the need for accommodations. Whether physical or mental, my impression is that care providers generally trend towards diagnosing and prescribing what they are selling.
I may well be cynical. But my cynicism does not necessarily mean I am incorrect!
I’m not saying that your basic principle of bureaucracy bloat is wrong, just that I doubt that individual college Accommodative Services departments have enough clout or autonomy to be significantly helping drive the trend toward increasing levels of accommodation. (In fact, in my anecdotal experience the trend currently may be towards a slight decrease.)
Of course the Accommodative Services Office would like more funding. Where your logic falls apart, though, is that having more students who need accommodation won’t get them more funding. They might argue to the administration that it should mean that they get more funding, but the administration won’t listen to them. It’ll just mean that the funding that they have will be spread even thinner.
That’s an interesting article, and he makes a good point, but he also makes some claims I would question, such as the “proven neurotoxicity” of digital media. What? Also, ADHD is super heritable, but like with autism, it’s not any specific gene that has been identified. That doesn’t make it any less heritable. If you have a parent with ADHD you are significantly more likely to have it too.
I think there are a lot of different things going on as we see diagnosis rates increasing. Changing attitudes toward neurodiversity, widespread introduction of childhood screening, differences in generational attitudes toward parenting, the de-regulating effect of cognitive switching introduced by smart phones, and yeah, probably multiple environmental factors actually switching on those genes more often than they used to. Stress can certainly exacerbate executive function problems but it’s hard not to takeaway from this article the idea that if parents were just less stressed, we wouldn’t be seeing the same rates of ADHD. I find that unlikely. The relationship is often the other way around - having an ADHD kid stresses parents out.
I have a definitely autistic/probably ADHD kid; it’s pretty stressful. I also was an ADHD kid, and I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 34. I’m pretty calm as parents go - definitely more calm than my parents. I’ve put a lot of effort into learning to remain on an even keel. I think if I were freaking out every time he had a problem it would be much worse, but this ain’t exactly a walk in the park even when I’m feeling calm. I tried to disengage today after he started escalating when asked to clean his room, but he was climbing on me, grabbing me, shrieking into my ear, and at one point I removed myself from the room and locked the door (for two minutes) because he was injuring me and I was stressed. Afterward we talked about it and how certain behavior is not acceptable, and we hugged. He was okay for a while but later on, he continued to struggle. The central problem here is not my lack of “attunement.” It’s impulse control.
There’s also this balance between whether there’s anything I particularly need to “fix” and whether it’s just okay for him to have bad days. He is getting in trouble at school about once every two weeks. We spoke with a psychologist today and we are getting him evaluated for ADHD. I’m not looking to put him on medication right now but they have a CBT program and the psychologist is a sleep specialist who may have some guidance there. It would be nice if this all came down to inadequate parenting, but in reality it comes down to neurological wiring.
I think the main point for me is the stress and strains and choices and narrowing options and catastrophes forced on people by the deteriorating social systems is likely to have major impacts on people and that will have consequences that exacerbate wiring and other issues.
Spoke with my wife about accommodations at her community college.
Her roster does not state which students get accoms. However, she can see if a student lists the Special Services coordinator as an advisor, which provides the same info.
She only offers them if requested. The most common is extra time for tests. Another is extended deadlines (which neither she nor I understand. Most often anxiety-related. But if the original deadline causes anxiety, why wouldn’t the extended deadline as well?). Both accoms are easy for her to provide through their software (Blackboard.)
She is also given the students’ previous grades in 100-level English and BusLaw courses. She said the best metric used to be ACT scores. (I know many argue about the value/reliability/bias of such tests.) If a student scored below 20 on the ACT, she anticipated that they would likely have difficulty in 200-level BusLaw. Today, many students do not take the ACT, or are not required to report it.
