MAY I FLUNK A STUDENT WITH DISABILITIES?

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Yes, it is possible to flunk a student with a disability.

Unlike the K-12 disability legislation that guarantees academic success, Sec. 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination against individuals with disabilities. These laws mandate access to education. When a faculty member has done all that is required to provide access to the course, giving the student the earned grade is proper and lawful.
Here's an access compliance checklist:

• Determine the academic standards for your course and stand by them. What do your students need to know and do to be successful in your course? To expect less from students with disabilities would be discriminatory.
  
  
• Communicate clear and concise expectations for performance to your students. Care should be taken to distinguish between essential and non-essentials components of the course.
  
  
• Let your students know you are willing to accommodate. This can be done verbally during lectures and in writing within a course syllabus. Disability Resources recommends both. You might say "Students with disabilities are welcome to discuss accommodations with me."
  
  
• Allow reasonable accommodations. Accommodations are changes in the way things are done and affect only non-essential aspects of the course. They are reasonable so long as course standards are not fundamentally altered.
  
  
• Permit students to use auxiliary aides and technologies that ensure access. Depending on the disability, students may use note takers, sign language interpreters, readers, scribes, and/or research assistants. Others may use tape recorder/players, computers, assistive listening devices, and other technologies for the same purpose.
  
  
• Help provide alternatives to printed information if needed. Braille, computer electronic text, large print, and tape cassettes may be necessary to ensure access to textbooks and classroom information. Disability Resources facilitates obtaining these alternative formats for students with disabilities. If Internet resources and other technologies are used, then they must also be accessible to students with disabilities as they are for other students.
  
  
• Make adjustments in instruction if asked. Some students need lecturers to face the audience while speaking. Others may need written or graphic information spoken aloud or described.
  
  
• Consult with the student and Disability Resources specialists when you have questions. It is the student's responsibility to requests accommodations. Requests authorized by Disability Resources in a Letter of Accommodation will have a direct link between the disability's functional limitations and the requested accommodation.
  
  
• Treat disability-related discussions and information with the strictest confidentiality. No professor has the right to destroy program access by ignoring confidentiality.

If compliance checks out, flunk the student who doesn't make the grade. Although it is possible for any student to complain, it is another matter entirely to show discrimination when faculty have complied with the law. For more information, give the folks at Disability Resources a call at 726-8217.

Adapted from The University of Montana's "How to Flunk a Student with a Disability" web page.

Thursday, 24-Sep-2009 15:04:14 CDT