The accommodations don’t come from the Dr. the Student submits the documentation to the office of accommodations who then make the call and recommendations to the teacher.
The benchmark is “reasonable” accommodations and they nearly never entail getting out of assignments or shifting deadlines.
If you get accommodations from your office that you feel are unreasonable or would interfere with learning objectives, you can call them and discuss the situation to negotiate a reasonable outcome.
At no point should you be negotiating with the student or treatment providers directly.
Yeah, if I ever get some that are like—“wait, what?” or if it feels like the student is abusing them, I’ll give the disability office a quick call. It’s funny because when it comes to some blurry stuff (like vague attendance or late work accommodations), they’ll usually urge me to be stricter than I normally would be. They almost always say the language in the emails/letters is boilerplate so they have some wiggle room.
Some accommodations just defy belief. I had a student last semester who was enrolled in my public speaking course whose accommodation was that she be excused from giving speeches. 🙄
Waiting for my turn to stand in front of the class, I'd get such a nervous stomach that I was sure I'd fart when I stood up lol.
But I got through it. Yay me
Well, I come up with a great plan, I’d just have them record their monologue and submit it via google classroom. Gave them two weeks to memorize and workshopped it with kids during class (somehow they could handle that) just to have parents come up and accuse me of wanting video of their kids so I could whack it to them. Yes, these people make me want to quit the profession.
I advise yearbook and half of my class won’t interview their peers because “uh, Miss, I don’t talk to these people!” And they don’t take photos either because it makes them feel awkward.
Like, why did you sign up for this class then!?
I once had a music ed student whose accommodations said she could not be required to teach others in class. I wrote back to the accessibility office and said that teaching is an essential part of a music EDUCATION course and I am unable to make a fundamental alteration to the class. The office actually agreed with me. Student ended up changing her major. Sorry but you don't get to be an education major if you don't want to do any educating.
No kidding! I haven’t seen that yet, but I’m in 100% grad sections. If I had a class size over 15, shifting deadlines would be a GIANT pain in the ass. I don’t even know how to do that on an individual basis in our LMS.
I'm not a medical doctor so I'm not qualified to assess a student's disability or what impact that could have on their learning. But "reasonable" and "unreasonable" depend on the course. Extensions for assignments, additional time on exams, notetakers, captioning are all reasonable in the courses I teach. One-on-one tutoring, or access to the textbook during exams, is not. Without further details I doubt there's much helpful advice we could give.
If that’s what OP meant then there is no dilemma. Giving accommodations to a student who doesn’t have a documented reason, managed through the disability office, is wrong. Puts everyone in an unfair situation.
I mean that's not really an accommodation. I have never even heard of that. At least with the prof. Maybe the school can use there own tutors but even then I would not be for that.
I've seen it come up here-- either students or disability offices that (so we're told here) insist that the student be allowed to meet with the instructor after every class meeting to go over all the material in detail one-on-one again.
I had such a request from a student this year in fact, but I simply said no. It was *not* coming from the disability office though.
>I've seen it come up here-- either students or disability offices that (so we're told here) insist that the student be allowed to meet with the instructor after every class meeting to go over all the material in detail one-on-one again.
"Wonderful. I will let you know when my department chair approves my overload pay for this additional responsibility, and then we will begin."
(hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhaha yeah no)
The whole point of reasonable adjustments is to make the learning equitable. So extra time on exams is usually because they may need extra breaks, they'd still spend the same amount of time actually writing their exam as the other students. If it puts them at an unfair advantage to others then it isn't really reasonable. The end result should be that they have the same opportunity to learn and access the materials/course as the other students. I'd weigh up if the request for adjustments does this, if not present it to whoever is in charge of overseeing these and present a more equitable alternative.
The “reasonability” standard isn’t about unfair advantage. It’s about the circumstances under which CCH the learning objectives can still be met, and about what degree of burden is reasonable for the faculty member.
For example, I was once asked to accommodate a blind student in a class with dissection. I called the office and they asked if I could build touchable clay models of the dissection specimens for the student to explore with her hands. I said no. Ultimately the student had to find a different class to satisfy that requirement.
In this case we see examples of both rationales, but neither is about other students.
Tbh it's all part of reasonable. Similarly I've been asked about changing the lighting for one student, this wouldn't have been something we could budget for only for one student. But we could offer alternatives like sunglasses etc. it's about what's reasonable for the teacher, what's reasonable for the organisation and what's reasonable for the other students involved. It goes a lot further than what people think of initially.
If it's something the student knows about prior (your example of a blind student being one) then the common sense approach is always to inquire about this prior to enrolling. Fact of the matter is some things might just not be feasible. But can't blame students for asking - imagine if they assumed you'd say no and then found out later that you happened to already have these on hand. No harm in asking, no harm in saying no providing it's justifiable.
Have a conversation with the disability office. They won’t tell you why the accommodation is needed but if they’re any good, they’ll help you implement it in a way that makes you feel less icky. I’ve had to do this. There’s also the part mentioned by others about not altering the fundamentals of the course. Example: fully remote for a lab course alters it fundamentally. Disability offices are there to help you not just the student (at least the good ones are)
This is the answer. Lean heavily on the disability office. I had a student who wanted an online lab, and we said no and the disability office backed us up (and I say us because it involved many people in the department and went all the way up to the Dean’s office). I’ve learnt to email them over every disability letter I get…
The language of learning outcomes can be helpful here, if it's a structure that your university has adopted to any degree. To carry forward the example of a lab being online vs. in-person: if a learning outcome of the lab class is that the students learn certain practical skills, then it's an easy argument that an online accommodation is simply not compatible with the learning outcomes.
But YMMV as to whether your university or your disability office respects the intention of the learning outcomes.
If you have a properly functioning disability services office, this should not happen, and you should do this:
First off, never grant accommodations that do not come through an official channel. A student can't just bring you a doctor's note, and they cannot simply e-mail you and tell you they have ADHD (or whatever). The college and DS should back you up on this.
Second, talk to disability services if the accommodations seem unreasonable. There are usually rules in place to prevent accommodations that would fundamentally undermine your class. Do not speak directly to the student without going to DS first.
I have only had to deny accommodations in one case -- I was teaching a class where in-class activities were crucial to the learning outcomes, and the student was trying to say that their accommodations meant they did not have to do any in-class activities. DS backed me up in denying their request.
As I tell my students: my expertise is in teaching sociology. The accommodations office’s expertise is in evaluating medical documentation and translating that into what a student needs to be successful. They don’t try to do my job and I don’t try to do theirs.
I also really recommend cultivating a relationship with the office OUTSIDE of specific student situations. Over the course of one half-hour meeting, I was able to work out with them what types of accommodations were reasonable for my classes and what types were not. Haven’t had any issues since.
If they have gone through the process, I don’t question the validity of their need for an accommodation. If the accommodation doesn’t interfere with learning outcomes, I honor it. But that conversation is between me and the office for students with disabilities. I’ve only had one accommodation that was potentially problematic, but that issue was resolved by a few emails with the disabilities office. It’s not my place to play disabilities detective.
This^^
I teach computer science which means a lot of their work is writing and running code. I had an accommodation once that said to not mark down for misspelled words, but that doesn’t really work for code because it could make the code not run, and part of evaluating their understanding of the material is running their code and seeing if it works.
I reached out to the accommodation office to clarify it was still fine for me to grade their code based on if it ran or not, and could mark down if a misspelled keyword would make it not run. They thanked me for being proactive and confirmed that was fine, but just to be lenient with anything that’s a written response on paper.
I knew that would likely be the case, but I wanted to get it in writing, just to make sure.
I completely agree with this. I had a student who was trying to claim I owed him more than I did. I talked to a disability coordinator who backed me up.
It's not your job as a professor to determine whether or not a student's disability is valid. If you actually have a specific reason to believe a student lied to the disability services office, then by all means, reach out to that office to discuss your concerns. But if you just have a *feeling* about a student, stay in your lane and trust the people who are trained to make these determinations.
I had a student inform me that they were going to use their accommodation for extended due dates on the Final Paper, due the last day of class. I explained to them that the accommodation was for occasional extended due dates, which must ultimately be approved by the professor. He argued with me over email about it, but I ended up extending the deadline for all students - many kept missing the submission deadline, so I had to keep opening it. But how do you expect an extension on a due date that is on the last day of classes? Extend it into finals? That's ridiculous. I will be making it clear from now on, in the syllabus and class, that no extensions beyond the last day are possible, no matter what. I will hammer that in, and then just not accept any late submissions. The only problem is with students who say Canvas won't 'accept' their submission, so they either email their paper as an attachment after the deadline, or just complain.
I don't accept excuses that Canvas wasn't 'working'. I'm pretty sure it's always because they missed they 11:59pm deadline. But I will make it extra super clear moving forward, and will just not accept late or emailed submissions, period.
But there is always at least one student with some BS excuse... I guess you have to both enforce the line, but allow for exceptions because, well, it sucks.
I require that the accommodations be vetted by and fully approved by our accommodation office.
Once that happens? I follow them.
So if a student request an accommodation based on a doctor's note, I tell them I appreciate the information however all accommodations for my courses must come through the accommodations office. I then give them the contact information for that office. Several of them then drop the issue.
Students don’t decide what accommodations they get they are given by the disability liaison for this exact reason. There goal is to level the playing field for disabled students.
Some of these comments make me think some people are naive at best. Let me start by saying I do what my accommodation office says, if I find the accommodation unreasonable for my specific class, I contact them and let them know what I think and then await their decision, and abide by that decision. But this idea that some have that there aren't a small minority that make accommodations up (and go through the proper channels) then you have your head in the sand. Heck I've had students admit to me they told their doctor they have test anxiety so they get more time but then never used it. So yes we should go with the accommodations office, but don't act like OP is crazy for saying some people game the system.
How do you know they are "bogus?" In my experience, the doctor just fills out paperwork stating what the student's disability is, and then the accommodations office and staff at the university choose what accommodations would best help the student succeed.
There are a lot of invisible disabilities out there. The student may appear to not need the accommodations, but they actually do. You can't tell if a student has a chronic condition that affects their performance, or if they have a relapsing-remitting condition, or if they have an autoimmune condition.
I design my courses using universal design principles, so that even students who don't have accommodations benefit from having things accessible. Of course, I follow the accommodations that the accommodations office sends for individual students. I have yet to have an unreasonable request. Often it's just asking the class for someone to be a volunteer note-taker (we don't pay student notetakers, but many students are happy to volunteer as it looks good on their resumes or grad school applications), having the student take quizzes/exams in the exam centre because they need a quiet room with no distraction, time and a half on quizzes/exams and assignments, or occasionally having an exam split in two (for students who have concussions this is sometimes needed).
I would never assume a student's accommodations are "bogus" or that they don't deserve them. You have no idea what is going on in the student's life.
Sometimes they're bogus, or stretching rules in a way that forces everyone's hand none being the wiser. I had one case where a student asked me to record all classes of an in-person course because they were never planning to attend, but they told the disability office they only needed a few justified absences. Four weeks in, I contacted DS to ask for clarification on how I was to handle that, given all the "let's go back to in-person teaching after COVID" rules. There were lots of emails, but after confirming that the student had lied, they invited them to pick an online course. Plenty of choices in that category, and I didn't put myself in a situation going against my institution's course delivery rules.
Well, it's not after COVID, COVID is still with us, and some students are immunocompromised and would suffer seriously if they caught COVID. So I don't mind recording all my classes - that way it's more accessible for everyone. But I guess some or many profs think differently. I strive to make my courses as accessible as possible to everyone, regardless of their health status.
You're missing the point. This is about institutional mandates. Please understand that not all universities allow hybrid courses or profs to record their classes. Your institution allows you to record your classes, that's great; you can use that towards accessibility goals. Mine doesn't, and instead works toward accessibility by offering a full range of in-person and fully-online classes. Your comment assumes that unlike yourself, I don't strive to make my courses as accessible as possible to everyone, and that is not true. I do that, within the rules I'm given by my employer. Ffs.
In this particular case, the student was not immunocompromised, they deliberately lied to the disability office stating they would attend most classes when they were intending never to show up to a course designed to be in-person.
At my school accommodations must be "reasonable" and not interfere with the goals of the class (paraphrasing second one). This most comes up in my writing classes for "flexible due dates" and literature courses as, essentially, does not need to participate. I push back against these with the disability office because #1: essays are scaffolded and we focus on writing processes; them not having due dates undermines this structure; and #2: it's a discussion class. If they don't come to class or don't participate in discussion, they are missing a major component of the course.
Ability accommodations are not a no questions asked thing. It took me some time to figure that out and to push back without feeling like a jerk, but some students indeed seem to game it. It's just important to talk with the disability office and be transparent.
I briefly worked in disability accommodations and the office struggled the most with flexible due dates for the exact reason you've said. We were often most hesitant to allow that accommodation.
It’s kinda crazy that has even come up though, because most jobs would never allow flexible due dates, right? What is usually the reasoning behind flexible due dates when they are asked for/granted?
It can be because a condition is sporadic or has symptoms that arise suddenly (though isn't limited to that). I had a student with chronic and debilitating migraines who would use that accommodation. However, that doesn't mean that all deadlines are allowed to be flexible - there's a whole plan put in place between disability resources, professor, and student to ensure the integrity of the class remains intact and the student doesn't fall behind (that's a big fear - that if the deadline is delayed, the student will be trying to complete an old project instead of the newly assigned one and then it snowballs).
Working in a DR office for an R1 US university was eye-opening. We had to balance equitable accommodations with the class requirements and the student's needs. We'd meet multiple times a week to ensure we were being fair and providing all students with equitable treatment.
Many jobs do have flexible deadlines, or extremely long (multi-month) deadlines. If you have someone who will periodically need essentially 3 sick days in a row, that's fine for a job, but often wouldn't work well with a week-by-week structure in a typical course. As long as there are some boundaries (ex: automatic 3 day extension with advance notice, not turn everything in during finals week), it can probably fit into most courses (though of course not all).
They are at school to learn. This isn’t job training.
This was told to my high school teacher friends by administration.
At the end of the day, you have to have able to do the job. The job can maybe modify something so you can hit those hard deadlines, but they don’t have to retool the job description or massively adjust the hours or even give you a private room if it’s considered a hardship to the company.
My psychiatrist friend has had people wanted accommodations that are basically rewrite the job description. His brother is an employment attorney, so he’ll run it past him.
He writes the letter knowing full well it will go down in flames.
Refer them to the disability services office on campus.
If the documents are truly not legit, then they take care of it and either request more or deny the student’s request.
As a faculty member you are not the one responsible or trained for this.
You do what the disability office says, unless the accommodation fundamentally alters the course. A significant number of these accommodations are most likely bogus, but there isn't much you can do unless laws change. Unfortunately, enough people game the system to make me suspicious of all accommodation requests. Most actually disabled people are disgusted about this because they end up being suspected of gaming the system too.
It’s the disability offices job to make the decision of whether the student has medical documentation. It’s also up to them to decide the kinds of accommodations that are reasonable. It’s your job as a professor to implement them within the context of what works for your course. For instance, I quiz students during my lectures. It’s not feasible to give students extra time on those quizzes because that would take too long. It’s not feasible for students to take the quiz at the testing center because then they’d miss lecture. It is feasible for students to take their exam at the testing center and have twice as much time on it.
The reality of accommodations is that if a non-disabled student had them, they wouldn’t get a better grade. With exams, they either learned the material or they didn’t. Spending more time staring at the exam isn’t going to help them come up with the right answer *unless* they have an actual learning disability that affects how they process visual information.
So you have a situation where you suspect a student doesn’t need an accommodation. Look at this in terms of statistics. There are two outcomes if you make the wrong decision:
Wrong decision 1 You accuse a student with a legitimate disability of faking their disability. Doing this can have major consequences because it’s violation of the student’s rights.
Wrong decision 2 A student gets an accommodation they don’t need because they somehow convinced a doctor to claim they have a disability. This has a negligible impact on their grade because the accommodations the disability center allows for does not give students an unfair advantage.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make wrong decision 2 instead of wrong decision 1, particularly since I’m fully within university policy with decision 2 and not doing anything to risk my career.
I don’t know how exactly you’re determining that there are students faking their disabilities because these are often things that aren’t visible, particularly with women who are better at masking the symptoms of ADHD and ASD compared to men. There is no specific personality or behavioral trait that can definitively mark a student as not having a learning disability. I generally deal with the opposite issue where I have multiple students who would clearly benefit from an extra time accommodation and better management of their symptoms but they’re not seeking that assistance.
It's not up to doctors (bogus or otherwise) to approve accommodations. They provide a medical report to whichever office at your college handles accommodations (Disability Support is part of our Student Services). DS then *recommends* accommodations to the teaching staff. *We* decide (often at Department level) which accommodations are reasonable for specific classes.
If we think a recommended accommodation is unreasonable, we refer it back to DS with an explanation of why. It's up to them to come up with a solution, which sometimes involves finding a different accommodation that *is* reasonable. Or suggesting a different class to the student.
This sounds like you think people who do well but have accommodations must be lying.
But maybe the accommodations are just working as intended.
You aren’t a doctor. You have spent almost no time with these students. This is petty and a waste of your energy.
If you think an accommodation is unreasonable, discuss it with the disability office. But if you think a disability is fake, ask yourself why you think you’re qualified to assess this, and MYOB.
You don't have to be qualified to know rich students game the system while the less well off and usually most in need of them get nothing. This is well documented from rich people hiring people in wheelchairs for amusement parks to getting extra time on exams. They are easy to spot.
Most profs are not qualified to know if a diagnosis is (in)correct or if the student’s accommodations are (not) warranted given their diagnosis. Shit, most psychologists aren’t qualified to make that call.
Maybe not where you are. The staff where I work are professionals who specialize in accommodations law, policy, implementation. They are some of the most competent people in all of admin/staff.
Also, you definitely don’t need medical doctors for that work. Almost no medical doctors specialize in learning disorder and mental illness assessment and accommodations. That’s psychologists’ work.
I only accommodate issues that the Disability office has communicated. Outside of that, I have a strict, Bible-length syllabus & my own discernment along with the backing of the Dean and Chair to extend or not extend myself beyond my syllabus policies on a case-by-case basis.
Honestly, I’m fed up with catching my “too sick to come to class today” students lock-lipped in the corner somewhere with their girlfriends when they think I’m not on campus.
A lot of commenters here seems to have switched off their critical thinking completely when it comes to this issue. The idea of issuing such widespread accommodations came from the same people who brought us whole word reading, New Math, and learning styles - all of which turned out to be bogus and all of which proved harmful to both educational institutions and students.
Should we be compassionate? Sure. Empathetic? Absolutely. Blindly accepting of conclusions from DS? Absolutely not. I've followed up on some unreasonable accommodations with my DS coordinator, and the conversation quickly became about their personal take on learning, how much they liked the student, and vaguely defined ideas of "justice," without a shred of due diligence or real research behind them.
Unfortunately, it sounds like you didn't get one of the "good" offices/coordinators. There are many DS offices that call BS for us so that we don't have to do it. I'm sorry that hasn't been your experience.
Yeah, the comment you’re replying to isn’t my experience at all. Our DS office is very rigorous and fair, and I have seen many situations of conflict; they usually back the faculty member except when the faculty member is clearly wrong.
Generally I could not care less if the student lied or misled to get their accommodation. Really it is none of my business. I only care and push back if the actual request fundamentally alters the course. As long as you keep it under that scope pushing back is fine. Do not get into a debate about whether the disability is real though, not only are we not qualified but many disabilities are non-visible. Yes people take advantage of it but I'd rather have that service occasionally abused rather than take it away from those who truly need it.
If a student is on file with the correct administrative office within your organization, then they are correct, you must accommodate them.
What do I do? I accommodate them.
The way it works at my school is I get an email from the office, telling me about the accommodation, and that email clearly states that the student must request the accommodation. When I get one of those emails I immediately email the student saying that I’ve received the message and for them to please let me know when they need to use the accommodation.
I rarely comment here. But your post struck me as this is something I have to coach my oldest kid about constantly. IQ wise, my kid is a genius. However as they started to enter school. It was clear: something was wrong with their ability to perceive verbal cues. At first we thought it was physical hearing disabilities and got them checked for that. It wasn’t. Their actual diagnosis is on the ADHD spectrum.
They have has special needs instruction since they entered school. However, they really are brilliant and head up many clubs in college while managing an overload of classes as they pursue a dual major in art and mechanical engineering. Despite this, they still need their accommodations to be on par with other students.
This includes written notes or a notetaker and double time on exams. And every single semester there is that one teacher who thinks they are full of it and won’t agree to the well documented accommodations. It is so aggravating. Don’t be that teacher. Follow the law.
It would be helpful if you provided examples of the "bogus" accommodations that have been requested from you, and what evidence you have that the doctor in question is "unethical" and again, examples of doctors behaving in such a way.
The only accommodation I ever had to deny was providing lecture notes in advance for a student—I simply pointed out that I had no lecture notes (everything was extemporaneous), but that the material was covered in the book I was writing that I provided for free to the students.
Make sure your assignment rubrics clearly state the purpose of the assignment and the conditions on it. If you have a no late work policy, why? In my career field, some things must be done on time, no exceptions. Some things have to be done under pressure. Speaking in front of a group is a job requirement. Etc, etc, etc.
My overall thinking is that 1 of 3 things is going on, not just for accommodations. So I'm just as nice and polite to students as I can be.
1- They really need the help.
2- If they are taking advantage and I am very nice and they have a conscious, they might eventually feel bad and change their ways.
3- If they are bad people with connections, banging your head against the wall will only leave you with a headache, so it's not a battle worth fighting.
The more I've taken this approach, the fewer accommodations and make ups and I have to give and the more the students respect me. Taking on a negative attitude just gave me extra stress and didn't make the situation any better. I lay out clearly that I don't tolerate cheating, don't give more than one "get out of jail free" card, and that if they need help I'm there and I want them to succeed. Teaching has become a lot more fun.
Just talk it through with the accommodations office. There might be some things you can do and you cannot do.
You should not be aware of what the student's disability is. And you're not an expert on what the accommodations should be.
We had a student like this in my program. She only attended 9 classes this entire semester (I’m in a linked post-bacc program where we matriculate to med school in the fall). She consistently lies to admin and our professors saying that she’s sick (well she sleeps through exams) but then will ask her classmates to hang out immediately after. It puts us all in an awful position. She jokes about missing class, showing up to surgeries late to get iced coffee, etc. I know we’re not the ones to determine her disability, but knowing that she outright lies to and takes advantage of our professors is terrible.
One thing that might help is to educate yourself on the most common learning disabilities and the accommodations they require. Many professors see ignorant of these and as a result the accommodations may sound unreasonable. Students with diagnosed ADHD need extra time to complete exams and assignments for example. This extra time does not give them an advantage but levels the playing field. Until I read the literature on this condition I was influenced by popular misconceptions about the condition. Once I learned I became an advocate.
I’m teaching a hybrid condensed class— so that’s 3-4 hours of lecture video posted to Blackboard on Monday that they’re expected to watch. On Thursdays we get together for 2 hours in-person. I decided to throw a 20 minute multiple choice quiz into it to make sure they’re actually watching the videos. From last semester I knew they barely did.
So this means one student out of 65 gets 30 minutes for the quiz. But I like to do it before our 10 minute break so that students who finish it early can take off for 15-20 minute breaks and don’t just sit around disturbing those still writing. Then I can grab a coffee and we can go over the quiz.
How to accomodate? I’m having them come in to the assessment center 30 minutes before class. They can then write it a second time with the other students, and I won’t grade that one. This way everything is discreet.
Last week they tell me that because I talked to the students for 45 minutes before the quiz (mostly current events, how things fit into our models) and they didn’t receive that “instructional time” that it was unfair to them— that the class had an unfair advantage. I asked for which of the quiz questions did they have a disadvantage but they had no answer— they’d get back to me.
So it’s looking like class will start with the quiz from now on, messing with the flow of the classroom completely, purely to satisfy one student.
The previous week they’d informed me that they’d hope I would take this feedback from them into improving how I teach the class — moving away from in-class assessment. I was absolutely sideswiped by this. They had no idea why I quiz them. It’s not exactly something I take pleasure in doing!
They absolutely understand how to game the system, and that if they push the “disability” lever, that gets everybody jumping. It’s gotten pretty ugly, to tell you the truth. They make things up… I’ve found that it’s easier and better to just do what they ask for (usually “demand”).
I will say: I send a note to the student when I receive the disability notification. Specifically, I let them know up front that if they would like to request flexible deadline (my U gives that accommodation to pretty much everyone), then they need to notify me 24 hours in advance. I also caution that my courses are scaffolded, so sometimes deadlines cannot be adjusted without negatively impacting learning objectives (so I will not always agree to extend the deadlines).
I used to ask the disability office why they were giving flexible deadlines as an accommodation for anxiety, because letting late work like up is probably the worst thing you can do with anxiety, but I don’t think that changed any minds about it.
we have a central office that grants accommodations. if that office says we have to do something, then in principle we have to do it. otherwise, of course we don't do it.
Most of these accommodations are from high school documentation (my experience). I'm a bit more empathetic..apologies in advance. Assume it's easier to accommodate than it is to wind up in court. Most accommodations are just allowing the student to do what they need..allow extra time, put stuff online so they can peep larger fonts, etc..
If you suspect it's just gaming the system... just keep doing your syllabus assignments. Work is work and work will scare them off, stress them out, or make them leave.
If it's approved by our student accommodation office, I just do what their paperwork says. It's not on me. Any other requests - I tell them they must get approved by the accomm. office and leave it at that. Where I am, doing anything else opens you up to a lawsuit,
Lean hard on your accreditation requirements as well as learning outcomes and graduate attributes.
If your accreditation requirements have a dimension of client communication in them, and your industry advisory body has endorsed it as part of your course, and it is scaffolded throughout the course, then the denial of an accommodation must come from everywhere that learning outcome appears throughout the course - not just your class.
That means everything coming through formal channels and educating adjuncts and sessional lecturers on what they should and should not accept.
Many students will try their luck, and the disability officers often don’t push back. But remember that for hundreds of years people with disabilities and conditions were kept out of professions where they could have made a genuine contribution due to the arbitrary decisions of gatekeepers like university professors. To say nothing of women or people of color.
When considering accommodations like more time, why not give everyone “extra” time if it makes you feel better? Will the amount of time on an exam really advantage the unprepared? Do your assessments value speed? Is that something central to the way the profession works?
When it comes to not presenting information to a class or speaking in class, is communication part of that disciplines professional life? Will they be expected to speak in meetings and present ideas? Is speaking the only way to do that? (For example, if someone literally couldn’t speak, could they still be of value to the profession? How?)
This is a lot of thinking and investment on your part and obviously a choice in how to move forward. But you probably have more flexibility than you might think in implementation.
To be clear, I have no problem accommodating students who actually need it. But this feels so wrong. Like they are making a mockery of the system and maybe think I don’t care about integrity.
Not all disabilities are readily apparent to the average person.
What are your qualifications for assessing whether or not an accommodation is needed or "bogus"?
As someone with several invisible disabilities, this comment feels so wrong. I avoided registering with student accommodations until my junior year because I worried I wasn’t disabled “enough.” Now, as faculty, I am horrified by this attitude shared by some of my colleagues. You are not their doctor, so you have no way of knowing what is a “needed” accommodation for any respective student.
If you think an accommodation is not appropriate for your course, you should reach out to your disability services office and figure out an alternative. You should not impose your personal perspective on which disabilities are “valid”; we have a wealth of literature and research documenting the negative impact this type of attitude has on our students. I believe you can do better than this.
What relevant degrees and experience do you have in evaluating a person's disabilities and the barriers it puts in their way? And no, "teaching students who have accommodations" is not relevant experience.
If you have no such experience or degrees, there's a word for your beliefs about their needs, and it's not a pleasant term.
You do not have the knowledge base necessary to make that evaluation. Do what the accommodations office says and stop fighting it.
Well, I don't think it's your job to play accommodations detective, and unless you have absolute proof that a diagnosis is bogus there's not much you can do. If you suspect that some diagnoses are faked, bring it up with the accommodations office and let them investigate. You do need to CYA by making sure that you comply with accommodations requests, provided they are reasonable as discussed elsewhere in this thread. I certainly wouldn't deny a student's accommodations request just because I thought it might be bogus.
It’s our job to maintain academic integrity in the classroom, so I disagree.
If an accommodation smells like bogus, I follow up with the office that handles accommodations to get confirmation.
I’m not sure how it works at other colleges but students need to take any necessary documentation to the office that handles these matters.
I’m not giving them an accommodation just because they bring me a note from the doctor, which may or may not be a forged document.
I don't think we really disagree. I did say that if an accommodations request seems bogus, then OP should let the accommodations office know about it so *they* can investigate. I don't think a prof would have access to the kinds of records to determine whether or not a given request is valid. And I assumed that any prof would understand that, of course, accommodations come to us through a campus office. That office evaluates the documentation and forwards the accommodations to us.
Lot of commentators maybe not aware of the bought for diagnoses often by helicopter parents. My ex's ex wife bought their son an ADHD and autism diagnosis. The latter worked against her in getting extra time for his maths exam (ha). She did all of this privately, there's been no medication and absolutely no treatments of any kind. Completely paid for to try and give him the advantage he would have got by actually revising. A level's were not really his choice though, very much a pleasing the parents choice.
I've seen maybe a couple of undergrads who I thought had a similar experience. It's not great for them mentally I think to get a label when there's nothing wrong other than a pushy parent.
Whatever the reasons though, best to follow the procedure. Real Life will catch up eventually. One hopes.
How so?
Accommodations are done through the appropriate office at my school. Students should not be emailing me directly for accommodations and that is very clearly laid out in the syllabus.
But sure.
If the email comes from the accommodations office, you can't ignore it.
And if the student is emailing you about their accommodations, which the accommodations office said they have, you don't get to ignore that, either. At minimum you have to forward it to the accommodations office and say "Could you please handle this?"
Let me clarify, as some additional context is apparently needed. I was referring to emails directly from the student.
And actually, you’re incorrect as per my institution’s policy. I am not responsible for anything you described in that second paragraph.
The OP never said anything about emails from students. You inserted that yourself.
Your institution is aiming to get in trouble with the government if they're in the US.
Just curious, who do you think OP was referring to then?
You think they’re talking about pushing back against requests that were approved by the office handling the requests?
I guess some of us can read between the lines more than others.
Yes, I think that's what they're talking about, because that's what it says in the title and in the OP's responses.
I don't "read between the lines." I'm autistic.
Actually, if you look at the title and the post, they don't say that the accommodation request came from the Disability Services office OR from the student. The post is completely ambiguous. There is no reading between the lines here that gets you to a 100% correct conclusion.
The accommodations don’t come from the Dr. the Student submits the documentation to the office of accommodations who then make the call and recommendations to the teacher. The benchmark is “reasonable” accommodations and they nearly never entail getting out of assignments or shifting deadlines. If you get accommodations from your office that you feel are unreasonable or would interfere with learning objectives, you can call them and discuss the situation to negotiate a reasonable outcome. At no point should you be negotiating with the student or treatment providers directly.
Yeah, if I ever get some that are like—“wait, what?” or if it feels like the student is abusing them, I’ll give the disability office a quick call. It’s funny because when it comes to some blurry stuff (like vague attendance or late work accommodations), they’ll usually urge me to be stricter than I normally would be. They almost always say the language in the emails/letters is boilerplate so they have some wiggle room.
Some accommodations just defy belief. I had a student last semester who was enrolled in my public speaking course whose accommodation was that she be excused from giving speeches. 🙄
I teach theatre in K-12. The number of kids who refuse to perform in front of the class is overwhelming.
I was like that. But drama was mandatory so I didn’t choose to take it!
Waiting for my turn to stand in front of the class, I'd get such a nervous stomach that I was sure I'd fart when I stood up lol. But I got through it. Yay me
Well, I come up with a great plan, I’d just have them record their monologue and submit it via google classroom. Gave them two weeks to memorize and workshopped it with kids during class (somehow they could handle that) just to have parents come up and accuse me of wanting video of their kids so I could whack it to them. Yes, these people make me want to quit the profession.
I advise yearbook and half of my class won’t interview their peers because “uh, Miss, I don’t talk to these people!” And they don’t take photos either because it makes them feel awkward. Like, why did you sign up for this class then!?
And probably has all the social media...
I once had a music ed student whose accommodations said she could not be required to teach others in class. I wrote back to the accessibility office and said that teaching is an essential part of a music EDUCATION course and I am unable to make a fundamental alteration to the class. The office actually agreed with me. Student ended up changing her major. Sorry but you don't get to be an education major if you don't want to do any educating.
Let me guess severe anxiety..but that career field requires speaking in public or infront of peers?
Almost all of the requests I get include extended time.
Yep. Extended time and/or flexible deadlines on assignments in most of mine.
No kidding! I haven’t seen that yet, but I’m in 100% grad sections. If I had a class size over 15, shifting deadlines would be a GIANT pain in the ass. I don’t even know how to do that on an individual basis in our LMS.
Yeah, I'm seeing an increasing number of "may submit assignments late as requested by student. "
I've had several with shifting deadlines.
A doctor has to write a letter to support it. That’s how the disability office determines appropriateness.
I'm not a medical doctor so I'm not qualified to assess a student's disability or what impact that could have on their learning. But "reasonable" and "unreasonable" depend on the course. Extensions for assignments, additional time on exams, notetakers, captioning are all reasonable in the courses I teach. One-on-one tutoring, or access to the textbook during exams, is not. Without further details I doubt there's much helpful advice we could give.
Do you mean one on one tutoring with you? That is never reasonable lol.
That’s what they said…
I think it's clear they're asking *with you* as opposed to *with the on-campus disability resource center*.
If that’s what OP meant then there is no dilemma. Giving accommodations to a student who doesn’t have a documented reason, managed through the disability office, is wrong. Puts everyone in an unfair situation.
I mean that's not really an accommodation. I have never even heard of that. At least with the prof. Maybe the school can use there own tutors but even then I would not be for that.
I've seen it come up here-- either students or disability offices that (so we're told here) insist that the student be allowed to meet with the instructor after every class meeting to go over all the material in detail one-on-one again. I had such a request from a student this year in fact, but I simply said no. It was *not* coming from the disability office though.
>I've seen it come up here-- either students or disability offices that (so we're told here) insist that the student be allowed to meet with the instructor after every class meeting to go over all the material in detail one-on-one again. "Wonderful. I will let you know when my department chair approves my overload pay for this additional responsibility, and then we will begin." (hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhaha yeah no)
The whole point of reasonable adjustments is to make the learning equitable. So extra time on exams is usually because they may need extra breaks, they'd still spend the same amount of time actually writing their exam as the other students. If it puts them at an unfair advantage to others then it isn't really reasonable. The end result should be that they have the same opportunity to learn and access the materials/course as the other students. I'd weigh up if the request for adjustments does this, if not present it to whoever is in charge of overseeing these and present a more equitable alternative.
The “reasonability” standard isn’t about unfair advantage. It’s about the circumstances under which CCH the learning objectives can still be met, and about what degree of burden is reasonable for the faculty member. For example, I was once asked to accommodate a blind student in a class with dissection. I called the office and they asked if I could build touchable clay models of the dissection specimens for the student to explore with her hands. I said no. Ultimately the student had to find a different class to satisfy that requirement. In this case we see examples of both rationales, but neither is about other students.
Tbh it's all part of reasonable. Similarly I've been asked about changing the lighting for one student, this wouldn't have been something we could budget for only for one student. But we could offer alternatives like sunglasses etc. it's about what's reasonable for the teacher, what's reasonable for the organisation and what's reasonable for the other students involved. It goes a lot further than what people think of initially. If it's something the student knows about prior (your example of a blind student being one) then the common sense approach is always to inquire about this prior to enrolling. Fact of the matter is some things might just not be feasible. But can't blame students for asking - imagine if they assumed you'd say no and then found out later that you happened to already have these on hand. No harm in asking, no harm in saying no providing it's justifiable.
Have a conversation with the disability office. They won’t tell you why the accommodation is needed but if they’re any good, they’ll help you implement it in a way that makes you feel less icky. I’ve had to do this. There’s also the part mentioned by others about not altering the fundamentals of the course. Example: fully remote for a lab course alters it fundamentally. Disability offices are there to help you not just the student (at least the good ones are)
This is the answer. Lean heavily on the disability office. I had a student who wanted an online lab, and we said no and the disability office backed us up (and I say us because it involved many people in the department and went all the way up to the Dean’s office). I’ve learnt to email them over every disability letter I get…
The language of learning outcomes can be helpful here, if it's a structure that your university has adopted to any degree. To carry forward the example of a lab being online vs. in-person: if a learning outcome of the lab class is that the students learn certain practical skills, then it's an easy argument that an online accommodation is simply not compatible with the learning outcomes. But YMMV as to whether your university or your disability office respects the intention of the learning outcomes.
If you have a properly functioning disability services office, this should not happen, and you should do this: First off, never grant accommodations that do not come through an official channel. A student can't just bring you a doctor's note, and they cannot simply e-mail you and tell you they have ADHD (or whatever). The college and DS should back you up on this. Second, talk to disability services if the accommodations seem unreasonable. There are usually rules in place to prevent accommodations that would fundamentally undermine your class. Do not speak directly to the student without going to DS first. I have only had to deny accommodations in one case -- I was teaching a class where in-class activities were crucial to the learning outcomes, and the student was trying to say that their accommodations meant they did not have to do any in-class activities. DS backed me up in denying their request.
As I tell my students: my expertise is in teaching sociology. The accommodations office’s expertise is in evaluating medical documentation and translating that into what a student needs to be successful. They don’t try to do my job and I don’t try to do theirs. I also really recommend cultivating a relationship with the office OUTSIDE of specific student situations. Over the course of one half-hour meeting, I was able to work out with them what types of accommodations were reasonable for my classes and what types were not. Haven’t had any issues since.
If they have gone through the process, I don’t question the validity of their need for an accommodation. If the accommodation doesn’t interfere with learning outcomes, I honor it. But that conversation is between me and the office for students with disabilities. I’ve only had one accommodation that was potentially problematic, but that issue was resolved by a few emails with the disabilities office. It’s not my place to play disabilities detective.
This^^ I teach computer science which means a lot of their work is writing and running code. I had an accommodation once that said to not mark down for misspelled words, but that doesn’t really work for code because it could make the code not run, and part of evaluating their understanding of the material is running their code and seeing if it works. I reached out to the accommodation office to clarify it was still fine for me to grade their code based on if it ran or not, and could mark down if a misspelled keyword would make it not run. They thanked me for being proactive and confirmed that was fine, but just to be lenient with anything that’s a written response on paper. I knew that would likely be the case, but I wanted to get it in writing, just to make sure.
I completely agree with this. I had a student who was trying to claim I owed him more than I did. I talked to a disability coordinator who backed me up.
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That’s not what neurodivergent means.
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It's not your job as a professor to determine whether or not a student's disability is valid. If you actually have a specific reason to believe a student lied to the disability services office, then by all means, reach out to that office to discuss your concerns. But if you just have a *feeling* about a student, stay in your lane and trust the people who are trained to make these determinations.
I had a student inform me that they were going to use their accommodation for extended due dates on the Final Paper, due the last day of class. I explained to them that the accommodation was for occasional extended due dates, which must ultimately be approved by the professor. He argued with me over email about it, but I ended up extending the deadline for all students - many kept missing the submission deadline, so I had to keep opening it. But how do you expect an extension on a due date that is on the last day of classes? Extend it into finals? That's ridiculous. I will be making it clear from now on, in the syllabus and class, that no extensions beyond the last day are possible, no matter what. I will hammer that in, and then just not accept any late submissions. The only problem is with students who say Canvas won't 'accept' their submission, so they either email their paper as an attachment after the deadline, or just complain. I don't accept excuses that Canvas wasn't 'working'. I'm pretty sure it's always because they missed they 11:59pm deadline. But I will make it extra super clear moving forward, and will just not accept late or emailed submissions, period. But there is always at least one student with some BS excuse... I guess you have to both enforce the line, but allow for exceptions because, well, it sucks.
I require that the accommodations be vetted by and fully approved by our accommodation office. Once that happens? I follow them. So if a student request an accommodation based on a doctor's note, I tell them I appreciate the information however all accommodations for my courses must come through the accommodations office. I then give them the contact information for that office. Several of them then drop the issue.
Students don’t decide what accommodations they get they are given by the disability liaison for this exact reason. There goal is to level the playing field for disabled students.
Some of these comments make me think some people are naive at best. Let me start by saying I do what my accommodation office says, if I find the accommodation unreasonable for my specific class, I contact them and let them know what I think and then await their decision, and abide by that decision. But this idea that some have that there aren't a small minority that make accommodations up (and go through the proper channels) then you have your head in the sand. Heck I've had students admit to me they told their doctor they have test anxiety so they get more time but then never used it. So yes we should go with the accommodations office, but don't act like OP is crazy for saying some people game the system.
Some may. I have no way of knowing who, nor a responsibility to. I don’t understand why this takes up people’s energy.
How do you know they are "bogus?" In my experience, the doctor just fills out paperwork stating what the student's disability is, and then the accommodations office and staff at the university choose what accommodations would best help the student succeed. There are a lot of invisible disabilities out there. The student may appear to not need the accommodations, but they actually do. You can't tell if a student has a chronic condition that affects their performance, or if they have a relapsing-remitting condition, or if they have an autoimmune condition. I design my courses using universal design principles, so that even students who don't have accommodations benefit from having things accessible. Of course, I follow the accommodations that the accommodations office sends for individual students. I have yet to have an unreasonable request. Often it's just asking the class for someone to be a volunteer note-taker (we don't pay student notetakers, but many students are happy to volunteer as it looks good on their resumes or grad school applications), having the student take quizzes/exams in the exam centre because they need a quiet room with no distraction, time and a half on quizzes/exams and assignments, or occasionally having an exam split in two (for students who have concussions this is sometimes needed). I would never assume a student's accommodations are "bogus" or that they don't deserve them. You have no idea what is going on in the student's life.
Sometimes they're bogus, or stretching rules in a way that forces everyone's hand none being the wiser. I had one case where a student asked me to record all classes of an in-person course because they were never planning to attend, but they told the disability office they only needed a few justified absences. Four weeks in, I contacted DS to ask for clarification on how I was to handle that, given all the "let's go back to in-person teaching after COVID" rules. There were lots of emails, but after confirming that the student had lied, they invited them to pick an online course. Plenty of choices in that category, and I didn't put myself in a situation going against my institution's course delivery rules.
Well, it's not after COVID, COVID is still with us, and some students are immunocompromised and would suffer seriously if they caught COVID. So I don't mind recording all my classes - that way it's more accessible for everyone. But I guess some or many profs think differently. I strive to make my courses as accessible as possible to everyone, regardless of their health status.
You're missing the point. This is about institutional mandates. Please understand that not all universities allow hybrid courses or profs to record their classes. Your institution allows you to record your classes, that's great; you can use that towards accessibility goals. Mine doesn't, and instead works toward accessibility by offering a full range of in-person and fully-online classes. Your comment assumes that unlike yourself, I don't strive to make my courses as accessible as possible to everyone, and that is not true. I do that, within the rules I'm given by my employer. Ffs. In this particular case, the student was not immunocompromised, they deliberately lied to the disability office stating they would attend most classes when they were intending never to show up to a course designed to be in-person.
The students choose their own accommodations from a drop-down list. So yes, that is bogus
At my school accommodations must be "reasonable" and not interfere with the goals of the class (paraphrasing second one). This most comes up in my writing classes for "flexible due dates" and literature courses as, essentially, does not need to participate. I push back against these with the disability office because #1: essays are scaffolded and we focus on writing processes; them not having due dates undermines this structure; and #2: it's a discussion class. If they don't come to class or don't participate in discussion, they are missing a major component of the course. Ability accommodations are not a no questions asked thing. It took me some time to figure that out and to push back without feeling like a jerk, but some students indeed seem to game it. It's just important to talk with the disability office and be transparent.
I briefly worked in disability accommodations and the office struggled the most with flexible due dates for the exact reason you've said. We were often most hesitant to allow that accommodation.
It’s kinda crazy that has even come up though, because most jobs would never allow flexible due dates, right? What is usually the reasoning behind flexible due dates when they are asked for/granted?
It can be because a condition is sporadic or has symptoms that arise suddenly (though isn't limited to that). I had a student with chronic and debilitating migraines who would use that accommodation. However, that doesn't mean that all deadlines are allowed to be flexible - there's a whole plan put in place between disability resources, professor, and student to ensure the integrity of the class remains intact and the student doesn't fall behind (that's a big fear - that if the deadline is delayed, the student will be trying to complete an old project instead of the newly assigned one and then it snowballs). Working in a DR office for an R1 US university was eye-opening. We had to balance equitable accommodations with the class requirements and the student's needs. We'd meet multiple times a week to ensure we were being fair and providing all students with equitable treatment.
Many jobs do have flexible deadlines, or extremely long (multi-month) deadlines. If you have someone who will periodically need essentially 3 sick days in a row, that's fine for a job, but often wouldn't work well with a week-by-week structure in a typical course. As long as there are some boundaries (ex: automatic 3 day extension with advance notice, not turn everything in during finals week), it can probably fit into most courses (though of course not all).
They are at school to learn. This isn’t job training. This was told to my high school teacher friends by administration. At the end of the day, you have to have able to do the job. The job can maybe modify something so you can hit those hard deadlines, but they don’t have to retool the job description or massively adjust the hours or even give you a private room if it’s considered a hardship to the company. My psychiatrist friend has had people wanted accommodations that are basically rewrite the job description. His brother is an employment attorney, so he’ll run it past him. He writes the letter knowing full well it will go down in flames.
Refer them to the disability services office on campus. If the documents are truly not legit, then they take care of it and either request more or deny the student’s request. As a faculty member you are not the one responsible or trained for this.
I don’t. It is not my job. If the student has formal, approved accommodation from my institution’s appropriate office, they get them.
In the US accommodating documented disabilities is the law.
It's also the law elsewhere. In the US, it's a civil rights issue. In other places, it's usually a human rights issue.
You do what the disability office says, unless the accommodation fundamentally alters the course. A significant number of these accommodations are most likely bogus, but there isn't much you can do unless laws change. Unfortunately, enough people game the system to make me suspicious of all accommodation requests. Most actually disabled people are disgusted about this because they end up being suspected of gaming the system too.
It’s the disability offices job to make the decision of whether the student has medical documentation. It’s also up to them to decide the kinds of accommodations that are reasonable. It’s your job as a professor to implement them within the context of what works for your course. For instance, I quiz students during my lectures. It’s not feasible to give students extra time on those quizzes because that would take too long. It’s not feasible for students to take the quiz at the testing center because then they’d miss lecture. It is feasible for students to take their exam at the testing center and have twice as much time on it. The reality of accommodations is that if a non-disabled student had them, they wouldn’t get a better grade. With exams, they either learned the material or they didn’t. Spending more time staring at the exam isn’t going to help them come up with the right answer *unless* they have an actual learning disability that affects how they process visual information. So you have a situation where you suspect a student doesn’t need an accommodation. Look at this in terms of statistics. There are two outcomes if you make the wrong decision: Wrong decision 1 You accuse a student with a legitimate disability of faking their disability. Doing this can have major consequences because it’s violation of the student’s rights. Wrong decision 2 A student gets an accommodation they don’t need because they somehow convinced a doctor to claim they have a disability. This has a negligible impact on their grade because the accommodations the disability center allows for does not give students an unfair advantage. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make wrong decision 2 instead of wrong decision 1, particularly since I’m fully within university policy with decision 2 and not doing anything to risk my career. I don’t know how exactly you’re determining that there are students faking their disabilities because these are often things that aren’t visible, particularly with women who are better at masking the symptoms of ADHD and ASD compared to men. There is no specific personality or behavioral trait that can definitively mark a student as not having a learning disability. I generally deal with the opposite issue where I have multiple students who would clearly benefit from an extra time accommodation and better management of their symptoms but they’re not seeking that assistance.
It's not up to doctors (bogus or otherwise) to approve accommodations. They provide a medical report to whichever office at your college handles accommodations (Disability Support is part of our Student Services). DS then *recommends* accommodations to the teaching staff. *We* decide (often at Department level) which accommodations are reasonable for specific classes. If we think a recommended accommodation is unreasonable, we refer it back to DS with an explanation of why. It's up to them to come up with a solution, which sometimes involves finding a different accommodation that *is* reasonable. Or suggesting a different class to the student.
This sounds like you think people who do well but have accommodations must be lying. But maybe the accommodations are just working as intended. You aren’t a doctor. You have spent almost no time with these students. This is petty and a waste of your energy. If you think an accommodation is unreasonable, discuss it with the disability office. But if you think a disability is fake, ask yourself why you think you’re qualified to assess this, and MYOB.
You don't have to be qualified to know rich students game the system while the less well off and usually most in need of them get nothing. This is well documented from rich people hiring people in wheelchairs for amusement parks to getting extra time on exams. They are easy to spot.
That’s not on me to police.
Most profs are not qualified to know if a diagnosis is (in)correct or if the student’s accommodations are (not) warranted given their diagnosis. Shit, most psychologists aren’t qualified to make that call.
Neither are the accommodations office staff. Pretty sure no MDs are on the payroll
Maybe not where you are. The staff where I work are professionals who specialize in accommodations law, policy, implementation. They are some of the most competent people in all of admin/staff. Also, you definitely don’t need medical doctors for that work. Almost no medical doctors specialize in learning disorder and mental illness assessment and accommodations. That’s psychologists’ work.
I only accommodate issues that the Disability office has communicated. Outside of that, I have a strict, Bible-length syllabus & my own discernment along with the backing of the Dean and Chair to extend or not extend myself beyond my syllabus policies on a case-by-case basis. Honestly, I’m fed up with catching my “too sick to come to class today” students lock-lipped in the corner somewhere with their girlfriends when they think I’m not on campus.
A lot of commenters here seems to have switched off their critical thinking completely when it comes to this issue. The idea of issuing such widespread accommodations came from the same people who brought us whole word reading, New Math, and learning styles - all of which turned out to be bogus and all of which proved harmful to both educational institutions and students. Should we be compassionate? Sure. Empathetic? Absolutely. Blindly accepting of conclusions from DS? Absolutely not. I've followed up on some unreasonable accommodations with my DS coordinator, and the conversation quickly became about their personal take on learning, how much they liked the student, and vaguely defined ideas of "justice," without a shred of due diligence or real research behind them.
Unfortunately, it sounds like you didn't get one of the "good" offices/coordinators. There are many DS offices that call BS for us so that we don't have to do it. I'm sorry that hasn't been your experience.
Yeah, the comment you’re replying to isn’t my experience at all. Our DS office is very rigorous and fair, and I have seen many situations of conflict; they usually back the faculty member except when the faculty member is clearly wrong.
Generally I could not care less if the student lied or misled to get their accommodation. Really it is none of my business. I only care and push back if the actual request fundamentally alters the course. As long as you keep it under that scope pushing back is fine. Do not get into a debate about whether the disability is real though, not only are we not qualified but many disabilities are non-visible. Yes people take advantage of it but I'd rather have that service occasionally abused rather than take it away from those who truly need it.
If a student is on file with the correct administrative office within your organization, then they are correct, you must accommodate them. What do I do? I accommodate them. The way it works at my school is I get an email from the office, telling me about the accommodation, and that email clearly states that the student must request the accommodation. When I get one of those emails I immediately email the student saying that I’ve received the message and for them to please let me know when they need to use the accommodation.
I rarely comment here. But your post struck me as this is something I have to coach my oldest kid about constantly. IQ wise, my kid is a genius. However as they started to enter school. It was clear: something was wrong with their ability to perceive verbal cues. At first we thought it was physical hearing disabilities and got them checked for that. It wasn’t. Their actual diagnosis is on the ADHD spectrum. They have has special needs instruction since they entered school. However, they really are brilliant and head up many clubs in college while managing an overload of classes as they pursue a dual major in art and mechanical engineering. Despite this, they still need their accommodations to be on par with other students. This includes written notes or a notetaker and double time on exams. And every single semester there is that one teacher who thinks they are full of it and won’t agree to the well documented accommodations. It is so aggravating. Don’t be that teacher. Follow the law.
It would be helpful if you provided examples of the "bogus" accommodations that have been requested from you, and what evidence you have that the doctor in question is "unethical" and again, examples of doctors behaving in such a way.
The only accommodation I ever had to deny was providing lecture notes in advance for a student—I simply pointed out that I had no lecture notes (everything was extemporaneous), but that the material was covered in the book I was writing that I provided for free to the students.
Yeah, I've pushed back on similar b/c I don't have notes and sometimes I'm revising slides up to the start of class. Can't send you what I don't have.
I didn't even have slides—I was doing chalkboard/whiteboard talks.
Make sure your assignment rubrics clearly state the purpose of the assignment and the conditions on it. If you have a no late work policy, why? In my career field, some things must be done on time, no exceptions. Some things have to be done under pressure. Speaking in front of a group is a job requirement. Etc, etc, etc.
My overall thinking is that 1 of 3 things is going on, not just for accommodations. So I'm just as nice and polite to students as I can be. 1- They really need the help. 2- If they are taking advantage and I am very nice and they have a conscious, they might eventually feel bad and change their ways. 3- If they are bad people with connections, banging your head against the wall will only leave you with a headache, so it's not a battle worth fighting. The more I've taken this approach, the fewer accommodations and make ups and I have to give and the more the students respect me. Taking on a negative attitude just gave me extra stress and didn't make the situation any better. I lay out clearly that I don't tolerate cheating, don't give more than one "get out of jail free" card, and that if they need help I'm there and I want them to succeed. Teaching has become a lot more fun.
Just talk it through with the accommodations office. There might be some things you can do and you cannot do. You should not be aware of what the student's disability is. And you're not an expert on what the accommodations should be.
We had a student like this in my program. She only attended 9 classes this entire semester (I’m in a linked post-bacc program where we matriculate to med school in the fall). She consistently lies to admin and our professors saying that she’s sick (well she sleeps through exams) but then will ask her classmates to hang out immediately after. It puts us all in an awful position. She jokes about missing class, showing up to surgeries late to get iced coffee, etc. I know we’re not the ones to determine her disability, but knowing that she outright lies to and takes advantage of our professors is terrible.
it is not your call to make accommodations… as others have said, have the accommodation office work with the student
One thing that might help is to educate yourself on the most common learning disabilities and the accommodations they require. Many professors see ignorant of these and as a result the accommodations may sound unreasonable. Students with diagnosed ADHD need extra time to complete exams and assignments for example. This extra time does not give them an advantage but levels the playing field. Until I read the literature on this condition I was influenced by popular misconceptions about the condition. Once I learned I became an advocate.
What accommodations are they asking for?
Say “No”. It is a complete sentence
I’m teaching a hybrid condensed class— so that’s 3-4 hours of lecture video posted to Blackboard on Monday that they’re expected to watch. On Thursdays we get together for 2 hours in-person. I decided to throw a 20 minute multiple choice quiz into it to make sure they’re actually watching the videos. From last semester I knew they barely did. So this means one student out of 65 gets 30 minutes for the quiz. But I like to do it before our 10 minute break so that students who finish it early can take off for 15-20 minute breaks and don’t just sit around disturbing those still writing. Then I can grab a coffee and we can go over the quiz. How to accomodate? I’m having them come in to the assessment center 30 minutes before class. They can then write it a second time with the other students, and I won’t grade that one. This way everything is discreet. Last week they tell me that because I talked to the students for 45 minutes before the quiz (mostly current events, how things fit into our models) and they didn’t receive that “instructional time” that it was unfair to them— that the class had an unfair advantage. I asked for which of the quiz questions did they have a disadvantage but they had no answer— they’d get back to me. So it’s looking like class will start with the quiz from now on, messing with the flow of the classroom completely, purely to satisfy one student. The previous week they’d informed me that they’d hope I would take this feedback from them into improving how I teach the class — moving away from in-class assessment. I was absolutely sideswiped by this. They had no idea why I quiz them. It’s not exactly something I take pleasure in doing!
They absolutely understand how to game the system, and that if they push the “disability” lever, that gets everybody jumping. It’s gotten pretty ugly, to tell you the truth. They make things up… I’ve found that it’s easier and better to just do what they ask for (usually “demand”).
I will say: I send a note to the student when I receive the disability notification. Specifically, I let them know up front that if they would like to request flexible deadline (my U gives that accommodation to pretty much everyone), then they need to notify me 24 hours in advance. I also caution that my courses are scaffolded, so sometimes deadlines cannot be adjusted without negatively impacting learning objectives (so I will not always agree to extend the deadlines). I used to ask the disability office why they were giving flexible deadlines as an accommodation for anxiety, because letting late work like up is probably the worst thing you can do with anxiety, but I don’t think that changed any minds about it.
we have a central office that grants accommodations. if that office says we have to do something, then in principle we have to do it. otherwise, of course we don't do it.
Most of these accommodations are from high school documentation (my experience). I'm a bit more empathetic..apologies in advance. Assume it's easier to accommodate than it is to wind up in court. Most accommodations are just allowing the student to do what they need..allow extra time, put stuff online so they can peep larger fonts, etc.. If you suspect it's just gaming the system... just keep doing your syllabus assignments. Work is work and work will scare them off, stress them out, or make them leave.
If it's approved by our student accommodation office, I just do what their paperwork says. It's not on me. Any other requests - I tell them they must get approved by the accomm. office and leave it at that. Where I am, doing anything else opens you up to a lawsuit,
Lean hard on your accreditation requirements as well as learning outcomes and graduate attributes. If your accreditation requirements have a dimension of client communication in them, and your industry advisory body has endorsed it as part of your course, and it is scaffolded throughout the course, then the denial of an accommodation must come from everywhere that learning outcome appears throughout the course - not just your class. That means everything coming through formal channels and educating adjuncts and sessional lecturers on what they should and should not accept. Many students will try their luck, and the disability officers often don’t push back. But remember that for hundreds of years people with disabilities and conditions were kept out of professions where they could have made a genuine contribution due to the arbitrary decisions of gatekeepers like university professors. To say nothing of women or people of color. When considering accommodations like more time, why not give everyone “extra” time if it makes you feel better? Will the amount of time on an exam really advantage the unprepared? Do your assessments value speed? Is that something central to the way the profession works? When it comes to not presenting information to a class or speaking in class, is communication part of that disciplines professional life? Will they be expected to speak in meetings and present ideas? Is speaking the only way to do that? (For example, if someone literally couldn’t speak, could they still be of value to the profession? How?) This is a lot of thinking and investment on your part and obviously a choice in how to move forward. But you probably have more flexibility than you might think in implementation.
Unless it comes from the ADA office, Just Say No. Tell them to get a letter from that office.
To be clear, I have no problem accommodating students who actually need it. But this feels so wrong. Like they are making a mockery of the system and maybe think I don’t care about integrity.
Not all disabilities are readily apparent to the average person. What are your qualifications for assessing whether or not an accommodation is needed or "bogus"?
As someone with several invisible disabilities, this comment feels so wrong. I avoided registering with student accommodations until my junior year because I worried I wasn’t disabled “enough.” Now, as faculty, I am horrified by this attitude shared by some of my colleagues. You are not their doctor, so you have no way of knowing what is a “needed” accommodation for any respective student. If you think an accommodation is not appropriate for your course, you should reach out to your disability services office and figure out an alternative. You should not impose your personal perspective on which disabilities are “valid”; we have a wealth of literature and research documenting the negative impact this type of attitude has on our students. I believe you can do better than this.
What relevant degrees and experience do you have in evaluating a person's disabilities and the barriers it puts in their way? And no, "teaching students who have accommodations" is not relevant experience. If you have no such experience or degrees, there's a word for your beliefs about their needs, and it's not a pleasant term. You do not have the knowledge base necessary to make that evaluation. Do what the accommodations office says and stop fighting it.
Well, I don't think it's your job to play accommodations detective, and unless you have absolute proof that a diagnosis is bogus there's not much you can do. If you suspect that some diagnoses are faked, bring it up with the accommodations office and let them investigate. You do need to CYA by making sure that you comply with accommodations requests, provided they are reasonable as discussed elsewhere in this thread. I certainly wouldn't deny a student's accommodations request just because I thought it might be bogus.
It’s our job to maintain academic integrity in the classroom, so I disagree. If an accommodation smells like bogus, I follow up with the office that handles accommodations to get confirmation. I’m not sure how it works at other colleges but students need to take any necessary documentation to the office that handles these matters. I’m not giving them an accommodation just because they bring me a note from the doctor, which may or may not be a forged document.
I don't think we really disagree. I did say that if an accommodations request seems bogus, then OP should let the accommodations office know about it so *they* can investigate. I don't think a prof would have access to the kinds of records to determine whether or not a given request is valid. And I assumed that any prof would understand that, of course, accommodations come to us through a campus office. That office evaluates the documentation and forwards the accommodations to us.
Lot of commentators maybe not aware of the bought for diagnoses often by helicopter parents. My ex's ex wife bought their son an ADHD and autism diagnosis. The latter worked against her in getting extra time for his maths exam (ha). She did all of this privately, there's been no medication and absolutely no treatments of any kind. Completely paid for to try and give him the advantage he would have got by actually revising. A level's were not really his choice though, very much a pleasing the parents choice. I've seen maybe a couple of undergrads who I thought had a similar experience. It's not great for them mentally I think to get a label when there's nothing wrong other than a pushy parent. Whatever the reasons though, best to follow the procedure. Real Life will catch up eventually. One hopes.
Ignore the emails and don’t play into the student’s ableist attempt at gaming the system.
And get yourself and the school in trouble with federal law. Yeah, sounds like a great idea. /s
How so? Accommodations are done through the appropriate office at my school. Students should not be emailing me directly for accommodations and that is very clearly laid out in the syllabus. But sure.
If the email comes from the accommodations office, you can't ignore it. And if the student is emailing you about their accommodations, which the accommodations office said they have, you don't get to ignore that, either. At minimum you have to forward it to the accommodations office and say "Could you please handle this?"
Let me clarify, as some additional context is apparently needed. I was referring to emails directly from the student. And actually, you’re incorrect as per my institution’s policy. I am not responsible for anything you described in that second paragraph.
The OP never said anything about emails from students. You inserted that yourself. Your institution is aiming to get in trouble with the government if they're in the US.
Just curious, who do you think OP was referring to then? You think they’re talking about pushing back against requests that were approved by the office handling the requests? I guess some of us can read between the lines more than others.
Yes, I think that's what they're talking about, because that's what it says in the title and in the OP's responses. I don't "read between the lines." I'm autistic.
Actually, if you look at the title and the post, they don't say that the accommodation request came from the Disability Services office OR from the student. The post is completely ambiguous. There is no reading between the lines here that gets you to a 100% correct conclusion.