<p>From this page discussing learning disabilities and college: </p>
<p>[LD</a> OnLine :: College Students and Disability Law](<a href=“http://www.ldonline.org/article/6082]LD”>College Students and Disability Law | LD OnLine)</p>
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<p>And here’s the actual text of the relevant law:</p>
<p><a href=“4”>quote</a> Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, [a college] may not make preadmission inquiry as to whether an applicant for admission is a handicapped person but, after admission, may make inquiries on a confidential basis as to handicaps that may require accommodation.
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<p>And here’s paragraph (c):
<a href=“c”>quote</a> Preadmission inquiry exception. When a recipient is taking remedial action to correct the effects of past discrimination pursuant to §104.6(a) or when a recipient is taking voluntary action to overcome the effects of conditions that resulted in limited participation in its federally assisted program or activity pursuant to §104.6(b), the recipient [the college] may invite applicants for admission to indicate whether and to
what extent they are handicapped, Provided, That:
(1) The recipient states clearly on any written questionnaire used for this purpose or makes clear orally if no written questionnaire is used that the information requested is intended for use solely in connection with its remedial action obligations or its voluntary action efforts; and
(2) The recipient states clearly that the information is being requested on a voluntary basis, that it will be kept confidential, that refusal to provide it will not subject the applicant to any adverse treatment, and that it will be used only in accordance with this part.
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<p><a href=“http://www.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/34cfr104.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/34cfr104.pdf</a></p>
<p>So colleges are legally prohibited from requiring applicants to disclose disabilities.</p>
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<p>You can’t actually believe that works in practice…</p>
<p>Of course it doesn’t work in practice. One must be able to meet the job “requirements”. For instance, let’s say you need to hire a validation engineer. And I’m making this totally up, but let’s say one of the job requirements is to be able to go up a step ladder to execute some function on the top of a piece of validation equipment. Clearly someone who is wheel chair bound would not meet that requirement. Or FedX and UPS have a requirement to be able to lift 50 lbs for specific jobs. If you can’t meet that requirement you aren’t hired. Is it discrimination? Well in some very broad context maybe. Is it illegal, no. Years ago printing presses had very narrow sections that a person had to get into to operate the equipment. An obese person would not fit into the space. Discrimination against the obese or job requirement? That’s what makes this whole issue so fascinating. What are qualifications for entry to highly selective schools. What qualifications can be legally defended. In the workplace if someone takes a job and they cannot perform the company is legally obligated in some respects to try to make it work. But “at will” eventually comes into play and the person can be dismissed. Sometimes people will sue claiming discrimination and then it is tested in the courts as has been occuring for several decades. Each case will illuminate what boundaries can be legally sustained or what is “at will.” This is what will occur in colleges as students pass through the K-12 system with all sorts of accomodations that have been legally mandated for several decades but that are currently not legislated as infinitely in colleges and universities. Families will test the conditions in the courts and the result will become a standard of operation. The post regarding “no extended time” and the Ivy Leagues is interesting…is it a qualification and “at will” or is it discrimination? I certainly don’t know. In the business case laws are in place to protect the employee and also to protect the employer. Will this stand for colleges? Do the colleges have rights to protection as well as students having right to protection? Interesting indeed.</p>
<p>Mildred post #237</p>
<p>The NCAA only reports to colleges whether or not the student qualifies to participate according to NCAA eligibility (they don’t report disabilities or accommodations the student might be using in HS or on SAT and ACT). </p>
<p>Keep in mind that the Ivies and competitive colleges look at the rigor of the HS course load for athletes too. Only the actual disability/disabilities and accommodations are not listed on the transcript. </p>
<p>NCAA FAQ’s for students with disabilities:</p>
<p>[Frequently</a> Asked Questions for Students with Education-Impacting Disabilities - NCAA.org](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?key=/ncaa/ncaa/legislation+and+governance/eligibility+and+recruiting/faqs/frequently+asked+questions+for+students+with+education-impacting+disabilities]Frequently”>http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?key=/ncaa/ncaa/legislation+and+governance/eligibility+and+recruiting/faqs/frequently+asked+questions+for+students+with+education-impacting+disabilities)</p>
<p>To Compmom – re your post #220:</p>
<p>First of all, I want to say that I certainly sympathize with your situation and I wish your daughter all the best.</p>
<p>As a parent, my own goal would be to see my kid in the environment that was must suitable for his unique abilities and needs. As the parent of a dyslexic kid, I have to say that in most cases for a young person with a significant learning disability requiring extensive accommodations, that is not going to be the most competitive or prestigious school environment. </p>
<p>I think one reason I am skeptical about the plaintiff’s case against Princeton is because I AM a parent of a dyslexic kid, and I remember worrying about whether he would be able to make it through the 6th grade in our local public school. As it happened, I got help for my son and he overcame his reading problems, and by the time he reached high school he was an avid reader and enthusiastic writer. But when he had a choice of high schools, I encouraged him to turn down the one with the “better” academic reputation in our community, in favor of the one with the [Essential</a> Schools](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Essential_Schools]Essential”>Coalition of Essential Schools - Wikipedia) based curriculum that seemed more suited to his learning style. </p>
<p>My son actually did well in high school and was a National Merit finalist, which had us looking briefly at the lovely viewbooks sent by Ivies and many other highly selective colleges. But the very best college book we read – the one that put our minds at ease and gave shape to my son’s college search, was Loren Pope’s Colleges that Change Lives. Most of the schools my son ended up applying to weren’t actually among the 40 that Pope profiled, but his book provided the model of what to look for in a college. </p>
<p>I do work with many parents of children with LD’s – and I have never yet met one who had a kid even contemplating an Ivy League school. For most families its a struggle just to get their kids through elementary and high school. They are worried about whether the kid will be promoted to the next grade; they are worried about whether their kid can meet the minimal requirements to graduate or pass a state-mandated exit exam. </p>
<p>I wish you and your daughter the best. I am skeptical of the Princeton plaintiff because many people with kids at elite schools game the system, and I do not think those people are doing any favors for those who have legitimate disabilities. Like your daughter, most young people I meet with real disabilities are reluctant to seek accommodations - they would prefer to succeed under the same set of standards and rules as everyone else. This is not to say that accommodations are bad — but in my mind, the point of the accommodations is to enable people with disabilities to function normally – not to put them at a competitive advantage in an elite environment. As a parent, I felt that when my son caught up to grade level standards, when he could earn a B in a regular classroom without extraordinary effort – it was time to let go of the LD label. Yes – my son is still dyslexic… but in my eyes he hasn’t had a “disability” since age 12 or 13.</p>
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<p>I thank you soo very much for clarifying that. </p>
<p>I had no idea that the accommodations one would need for the SAT or ACT would not be forwarded over to the University via vis the NCAA.</p>
<p>I looked that up through the web site of the public university over where I live and over there (on their web site at least) they strongly encourage a great deal of disclosure for the athletes, presumably for the student/athlete to just go on ahead during recruitment season to meet with the offices of student disabilities and all of that.</p>
<p>Sorry for my mistake. I was not trying to mislead anyone. I just looked it up through the wrong venue.</p>
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<p>As someone who has both worked freelance and hired freelancers in a corporate environment, I can tell you that your freelancers are definitely subject to deadlines and time constraints. In fact, they are MORE likely to have their professional prospects damaged by missing deadlines than in house employees, who are more likely to be cut clack in case of illness. </p>
<p>Clearly, there are ways to try to build slack into the schedule. And everyone feels for your D and for your concerns about her health and happiness. She sounds like an extraordinary young woman. </p>
<p>But I would be less quick to throw around the word “ignorant” if I were you.</p>
<p>To the extent that I can tell, Princeton’s claim that there is an Ivy League policy is either false or the change has been so recent that we were not told about it last April and schools like Yale have not updated their websites to say that they no longer provide the accommodation of extended time when it is justified by testing. On its web page discussing cognitive disabilities, Dartmouth says, “Some of the more common accommodations include extended time and/or a separate venue for timed in-class tests, notetaking support, document conversion, use of adaptive technology, reduced course loads, speech-to-text captioning, and development of advocacy skills.” For fun, I looked at Princeton’s website and the following web page [Disability</a> Services](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/studentguide/getting_help/disability_services/]Disability”>http://www.princeton.edu/studentguide/getting_help/disability_services/), updated as of April 23, 2009, appears to say that extended time is an accommodation that is granted when justified. If that is still valid, I think their legal position may be a little weak. The case will come down to whether her disabilities logically and reasonably imply that accommodation.</p>
<p>It is very hard to use pre-litigation positioning in the press to make any serious judgments about the girl’s LDs, her testing, etc. Occasionally, I am in the middle of situations that get newspaper coverage and in no case has the newspaper coverage been accurate. Plus, in this situation, the lawyers are posturing for the press.</p>
<p>calmom, I think the situation you describe, of being thrilled if a kid with LDs can perform reasonably well, is more the norm. We were in that situation for quite a while. Our son really couldn’t read until mid-way through third grade. Reading physically hurt him and the page still gets blurry after about 20 minutes. When my son was in middle school, we were unsure that he would ever be able to achieve what was clearly very high potential. Writing also physically hurt him. His writing didn’t kick in until high school, and only with massive effort by us in redirecting his education and I can’t describe the determined effort he made. He had to work through physical pain as well as lots of frustration to get to a point that his reading and writing are acceptable at a high level, but he will never have the stamina that others have.</p>
<p>I think society wastes the potential of a lot of very bright kids with LDs who don’t develop positive self-esteem and give up, but I think that the hardest situations are kids who would be average or less than average without LDs but have significant LDs. Adults with LDs are highly over-represented in our prison population. The cost to society of not addressing the issues for many of these kids is probably quite high.</p>
<p>But, this thread is about kids with LDs at elite schools. In our son’s case, we wouldn’t have pushed as hard for him if he didn’t so want to explore ideas and be at the top (and if he didn’t seem so unusually bright). He’s back from school. One consequence of having an LD for him is that he is just exhausted, not from partying, but from the combination of working and from his ECs. He’ll sleep for most of the weekend. My wife’s brother, a dyslexic who went to a very good school and is now a biology professor at a very good university, used to come home after mid-terms and finals and sleep, flop on to the living room couch, and sleep essentially for two or three straight days. He does the same now after he writes grant proposals. The reading and writing just exhaust him, like they do my son. My son will have to deal with that. But, he was discussing school tonight and said that he’s got to work on his grades. He believes he has two A+'s and two A-'s and wants to make sure the A-'s don’t slip. He says he doesn’t think it makes sense to push for A+'s like he did in HS; the cost-benefit calculus just isn’t there. What do you with a kid with drive like that? I think you help him find an elite school that will work with him. I know that there will be additional bumps in the road because we have an educational system in which the only valid forms of input and output are written and in which the work level stresses non-LD kids, but he is not the only kid with LDs with high aspirations.</p>
<p>Regarding accommodations, both of my kids have no difficulty asking for justified accommodations. Neither feels any stigma. My son just thinks that his deficits are as much a part of him as are the gifts and he doesn’t know who he’d be without them. He thinks it is natural to describe the disabilities, how he works around them, and what will help him succeed. He thinks he needs accommodations in an academic arena to show how well he knows the subject. He sees no shame in that. My daughter, whose LDs were diagnosed later, has come to the same position but does not have the same confidence in herself.</p>
<p>As I said in an earlier post, they, like other high-performing kids with LDs, will need to limit course, grad school and career choices to those that play to their strengths and that limit exposure to their weaknesses. That is restrictive, but you can clearly be a successful biology professor with dyslexia but I’d guess that it would be a lot harder to be a successful history professor. With my former professor hat on, I’m driven by talent, motivation, and psychology (actually, the same is true now as an employer). I’m looking for kids who are bright (very bright whenever possible), driven, and not screwed up (so that their psychological makeup does not get in the way of succeeding, which it does for many people). If you give me a bright to brilliant kid (or employee) who is driven to succeed and doesn’t let her psyche get in the way of her success, I’d happily take her over many other kids even if she needs extra time on tests or a note-taker or breaks or a calculator when she takes tests. [As an employer, my employees have to get up in front of clients and I might have trouble with a speech-related disability because that would impair their ability to do the job].</p>
<p>The bigger picture of academic performance among athletes was researched and published in a couple of books by a former president of Princeton. One wonders if this lawsuit is more about closing a widening divide between academics and athletics, and whether that has anything to do with Princeton’s position?</p>
<p>[William</a> D. Adams - College Sports and Educational Values | Free Lecture | Forum Network from PBS and NPR](<a href=“http://forum-network.org/lecture/college-sports-and-educational-values]William”>http://forum-network.org/lecture/college-sports-and-educational-values)</p>
<p>"William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students, as described in their book, Reclaiming the Game. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. They examine the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform.</p>
<p>Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies The Shape of the River and The Game of Life, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at 33 academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes “under-perform.” In other words, they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades."</p>
<p>It may be that no Ivy gives 100% extended time to any disabled student, though some students are given 50% extended time.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang, it could be the the Ivies offer 50% extra time and not 100% although we did not hear that. We heard that 100% extended time would be non-standard and would require scrutiny of the neuropsychological test data. But, according the the article referenced by Post 228, Princeton is claiming that no Ivies give extended time at all. As of last April that was not true. If the the Ivies have made changes since then, I’m surprised that they haven’t modified their websites.</p>
<p>MomPhD, I had not seen those results. Given that the Ivies have a big part of their class dedicated to athletes and the Little Three/NESCAC have an even bigger percentage, that seems like a real issue. Perhaps, as some have suggested, a recruited athlete with LDs is a double whammy for the Ivies and what we’re seeing in this case is the double whammy rather than a good case about accommodations with which the kid could succeed. Both take lots of extra time and there are only 24 hours a day even at Princeton.</p>
<p>Perhaps, if the Ivy’s are seriously considering going to a no extended time requirement Princeton will not settle and be the Ivy’s “test case” for the legality of the position. Only time will tell as this suit progresses. It could be that it is being discussed and leaked as a “test balloon” and that is why the websites have not been changed.</p>
<p>I’d be surprised if Ivy League Presidents get together to talk about extended time for kids with LDs. I’d also be surprised if Brown, for one, would agree to such a change. It just runs counter to their uber-PC ethos. Yale has Sally Shaywitz on the faculty and she runs Yale’s Center for Dyslexia & Creativity ([Yale</a> Center For Dyslexia & Creativity](<a href=“http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Stu_college.html]Yale”>College Planning - Yale Dyslexia)) and although I don’t think elite universities are any less hypocritical than other organizations, it would be pretty hard to adopt a policy that runs against what one of the world’s experts on the subjects recommends based upon her research when that expert is on your faculty. </p>
<p>Princeton, in its infinite wisdom, believes in its heart of hearts that any accommodation is a circumvention of the true way although they were politically correct enough not to say that. If, in their judgment, the girl’s disabilities don’t require extended time (and if they believe that the girl and her parents were gaming the system), they’d say no. They wouldn’t back down if the girl threatened to sue (after all, they fought for years a law suit from the DONOR who gave the money for the Woodrow Wilson School but felt that the university was subverting the bequest). And, so they’re weathering the suit and my guess is that a crackerjack lawyer made the dumb statement that is quoted as part of public positioning.</p>
<p>The allegation in the Bowen/Levin book is that recruited athletes, even recruited athletes at elite schools, are considerably less academically qualified than non-athletes. But I think that is irrelevant for this student’s case. It doesn’t matter whether she plays sports. She was accepted to Princeton, she’s there now, and she either is or is not legally entitled to the accommodations she is requesting.</p>
<p>Although I’m the parent of a student who has learning disabilities and benefits from accommodations, including extended time, I find myself sympathetic to Princeton’s case. Accommodations are supposed to free students from irrelevant barriers that prevent them from showing their abilities. But the key word is “irrelevant.” </p>
<p>Students should not be penalized for incidental problems unrelated to the learning objectives. So, for example, a student with a broken hand shouldn’t be penalized because he can’t write an exam; he should get some kind of accommodation-- a scribe, a keyboard, oral administration of a test-- so that he can show that he learned the material. But Princeton may be claiming that the ability to quickly organize and analyze the course material is not incidental, but is one learning objective, and students who can’t do it simply haven’t mastered the course. </p>
<p>I’m assuming that the student has the learning disability she says she has, and it takes her six hours to write an exam that the ordinary Princeton student would finish in less than three hours. But I think Princeton is well within its rights to say, “That’s not good enough. When we give a student a Princeton degree, we’re saying she has a certain ability to analyze fairly quickly. If you can’t do this more quickly, you haven’t earned a degree from Princeton.” I don’t say that Princeton ought to demand speed-- I don’t have an opinion one way or the other-- but I think Princeton is within its legal rights to demand a certain speed.</p>
<p>The article does NOT contain a statement from Princeton – the article states:
[Centraljersey.com</a> | Central Jersey Community Newspapers, News, Entertainment, Sports, Resturants, Everything in Central Jersey](<a href=“http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2009/11/06/topstory/doc4af422c4aec29442270463.txt]Centraljersey.com”>http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2009/11/06/topstory/doc4af422c4aec29442270463.txt)</p>
<p>So, from the article all we know is that the Plaintiff ALLEGES in a complaint that SOMEONE (we don’t know who) told her that Princeton no longer gives extended time because of an Ivy League policy.</p>
<p>But you will also find from the comments posted to The Daily Princetonian article that there are, in fact, students at Princeton who receive 50% extended time on tests. </p>
<p>Given the fact that the plaintiff claims to have a language disability that would impact her processing and comprehension of language, its quite feasible that the plaintiff misunderstood what was said to her. (Even without a disability, people tend to make mistakes when reporting conversations in the course of a debate, dispute, or other emotionally-arousing situation). For example, she might have been told that Princeton and other Ivy League schools no longer “automatically” grant time extensions to all students with ADHD; or she could have been told that they never grant the extensions until after alternate accommodations have been first tried; or some other sort of qualification or provision. </p>
<p>In any case, I’m highly skeptical of that claim as to what the plaintiff was “told”. I’ve been looking at this thing through my lawyer eyes – I even went online to try to pull up the actual pleadings in the case but was unsuccessful. I did notice that the news articles didn’t quote from any papers filed by the University in opposition to the request for injunction… which is odd. (I’m wondering whether some papers were filed under seal because of privacy concerns?).</p>
<p>Here’s what Princeton does say (from their web site):</p>
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[Accommodations[/url</a>]</p>
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[url=<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/ods/student_services_process/]Student”>http://www.princeton.edu/ods/student_services_process/]Student</a> Services](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/ods/student_services_process/accommodations/]Accommodations[/url”>http://www.princeton.edu/ods/student_services_process/accommodations/)</p>
<p>I’m not sure what they mean by “iterative process” but I think they mean that the accommodations offered are repeatedly reevaluated over time. That and the “individual context” language make me think that the policy might be one of beginning by offering more limited accommodations and then adding more as needed based on experience.</p>
<p>Calmom, I wrote what I wrote because I am specifically acquainted with the language and writing disorders. There are no accommodations listed that address those disorders and I supplied a number of possible accommodations for those disabilities. So if Princeton accepts those disabilities (a big if), then it seems to me she has a case because the accommodations should apply to her disability. (I would guess the breaks apply either to the ADD or the physical disability.) </p>
<p>Also, you wrote, “for example, she has a score of 11 on an ACT or SAT essay, that score by itself would negate the idea that she has a below average ability to communicate in writing.” She doesn’t have to have a “below average” ability to communicate in writing to be classified ld. They could have classified her based on the discrepancy model which takes into account her ability to write compared to her IQ. So if her writing tests come up ‘average’ (say like a person with a 110 IQ) and her IQ is 160, I believe she could be coded with a writing disability. (Although I suspect that kind of coding is more likely to fly at a private school than a public school.) But it is possible that her writing problems are more minor-- involving spelling or grammar, for example.</p>
<p>That said, I do have problems seeing how a person with an expressive/receptive language disability could score high enough to have been admitted because, in my experience, those diagnosis have a set cut-off (somewhere in the high 70s) and cannot use the ability-achievement discrepancy model. That said, as a little boy, my son had a severe expressive and receptive language delay. When he entered K, he could not understand stories during story time. The ‘reading intervention’ team called me to say he couldn’t answer their questions about a story so I should put him in their program to prepare him to learn to read. I told him to test him again-- but this time, give him the book. They were shocked. He read fine and could understand the story when he read it himself, but had a lot of trouble with oral language. So it is possible that this young lady has a similar problem. </p>
<p>About someone’s suggestion that she “try out” the accommodations… Does the kid in a wheelchair have to try to get up the stairs at least once before being allowed to take the elevator? The student should have a track record of not having accommodations which was part of the original IEP/504 process. </p>
<p>I do think there may be information missing and I am rather skeptical of the idea that the ivies got together and decided that students can’t have extended time. It seems to me that it depends on the situation. If they have a student who can’t write and needs a scribe, they may need to give additional time just to accommodate the scribe’s writing. In other words, it may take longer for the student to dictate his/her thoughts than if the student were writing it for him or herself. So I have my doubts about such blanket statements.</p>
<p>If her testing is old or Princeton does not agree with the diagnosis given, the lawsuit makes sense (and, frankly, so does her admission).</p>
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<p>But that’s NOT what the complaint alleged. They CLAIMED that she was something like 12th percentile… at least in the 2003 testing.</p>
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<p>I’m familiar with the discrepency model. It makes some sense in the context of IDEA and IEP’s, but it does NOT fit within the definitions under the ADA. That is… if you’ve got a 5th grader who tests out at 60th percentile in reading & language but has an IQ that should put him at 90th percentile… then it makes sense recognize that there may be a learning disability as a first step to giving that 5th grader the “free and appropriate” education he is entitled to. </p>
<p>But ADA is not about educating children - it is about providing support to people who have disabilities that substantially interfere with their ability to function. See [What</a> is the ADA: Definition of Disability](<a href=“http://www.adata.org/whatsada-definition.aspx]What”>http://www.adata.org/whatsada-definition.aspx)<br>
That word “substantially” means in the context of ordinary people – it doesn’t mean that someone is entitled to accommodations to allow them to be a superstar. </p>
<p>So if a college student is blind – that student has a disability protected under ADA. If the student has dyslexia that is so severe that he reads only on a 3rd grade level-- then that kid may have a disability protected under ADA - because normal 18 year olds read above 3rd grade level. But if that person’s dyslexia means that he tests out at the 70th percentile for adults in terms of reading speed and comprehension-- that’s not an ADA-protected disability any more. It doesn’t change the diagnosis – the person is still dyslexic – but it changes the legal requirement. </p>
<p>I don’t know what 70th percentile would mean for an adult reader, but lets assume for purposes of argument that we have a dyslexic 18 year old who reads at 10th grade level, and that [the</a> average adult reads at 8th grade level.](<a href=“Readability - Wikipedia”>Readability - Wikipedia) Obviously, college students should be able to read at college level. Most community colleges and public colleges provide some sort of remedial level classes to help get students up to speed – and many would give a student with a documented diagnosis accommodations – but I doubt that under the law that they have to give them to the young adult with the 10th grade reading ability. A college might want to give that student extra support as being consistent with their own educational mission – but mere diagnosis isn’t enough to bring a person within the protection of ADA. </p>
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<p>The IEP process has absolutely nothing to do with ADA/504 - its a different law and a different set of requirements. (It might be handled together during elementary school years, but the laws are still different). So it really doesn’t matter what accommodations someone received as a child – the college is entitled to seek current documentation and make its own determinations as to what accommodations will be appropriate.</p>
<p>Princeton has information that we don’t have: they know what documentation was presented. The complaint that was reported in the media clearly alleges facts that are irrelevant to Princeton’s determination (the 2003 childhood diagnosis and testing) – but we can’t tell from the information in news reports how much, if any, of the documentation given to Princeton pertained to current level of functioning. </p>
<p>So its not analogous to the wheelchair situation – its more analogous to someone who walks with a limp and uses a cane. I think it would be unfair to expect the hypothetical person with the cane to walk up three flights of stairs, but maybe not a problem to expect them to walk up two or three steps to get to a building entrance. </p>
<p>Based on the accommodations that were offered – it looks to me like the only current documentation was for the focusing/distraction problem in connection with ADHD. If she walked into the ODS with a medical diagnosis of ADHD that recommended a distraction-free testing environment, that report wouldn’t by itself entitle her to extended time. If there was no other current testing, the fact that she had extended time given in high school wouldn’t obligate the college to offer it - the ADA does not mandate that each successive educational institution give the person whatever it was they had before. </p>
<p>Again, I’m looking at this through my legal eyes… and based on what was offered and what was alleged in the complaint, that’s the scenario that makes the most sense. (Either that or its really clumsy pleading on the part of the attorney, which I think is unlikely – it looks more to me like the attorney is trying to bootstrap the older diagnosis onto a current one, which works well for a press release but won’t stand up in the long run in court).</p>
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<p>If her testing is old, what makes sense is not a lawsuit but retesting with adult norming. </p>
<p>If Princeton disagrees with the accommodations given by her high school based on current testing, then what makes sense is to try the Princeton way on the mid terms, and if she doesn’t have sufficient time to finish, then present that evidence and ask for extra time. This is the process that Princeton publishes as policy, as quoted by Calmom. (Moreover I’m willing to bet that Princeton is replete with freshmen who find their midterms significantly more challenging than HS, and perform poorly on them as a result. This doesn’t qualify as “irreparable harm” IMHO.)</p>
<p>Further, I would suggest that if even after appropriate accommodations participation in an EC is incompatible with academic success–either because it doesn’t leave her with the time and energy that she <em>personally</em> needs to study enough to get the grades she desires, or because it requires her to forgo the medication needed to control her condition–that then it is not unreasonable to expect her to face the same choice that other students routinely face: give up or limit time devoted to the EC, or accepts lower grades. </p>
<p>It doesn’t make sense to leap directly to a law suit.</p>