I read with incredulous interest Joanne Jacobs October 7, 2010 blog about the Education Department earmarking $10.9 million in grants to help students with intellectual disabilities attend college. Really? Are you kidding me? Jacobs points out that intellectual disability is the PC term for mentally retarded.
Having spend 23 of my 30+ years in education in higher education I can tell you that an oft- heard complaint of college professors is that our students seem less prepared for college level work than they did 10 years ago. Extending IDEA to the college classroom seems a recipe for disaster. Already campuses boast Disabilities Offices that put together the equivalent of an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for college students; these are students with various learning disabilities. At least on my campus most professors comply with these plans but are careful about how they do so. I’ve had countless students who present me with one of these plans with accommodations ranging from taking exams privately to having exams read to them in the disabilities office. I get the need for a private exam space. Many of us need quiet, non-distraction for thinking. I am a little alarmed by the exam needing to be read to the person. Since I train secondary teachers it is important to me that they can read. I’ve learned over the years through a little experimentation that these students do much more poorly on the exam if I, or a select graduate student, read the exam to them. It does make me question if more than exam reading is taking place in the disabilities office.
Originally conceived after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, these offices set out to make campuses and higher education available to students who were wheelchair bound, blind, deaf, or otherwise denied access to the intellectual pursuits their active brains, but non-compliant bodies denied them. No problem. This is a fair and much needed accommodation for people who have something to contribute to the intellectual health of the nation. How sad if the great physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking had been denied an education because of his physical limitations.
Jacobs, in her blog, points out that until now community agencies have served the purpose of providing life skills training, job shadowing, and the like to intellectually disabled people. Does this service – and service it is – really belong on college campuses? Once the camel’s nose is under the tent will colleges have to provide accommodations for intellectually disabled student who want to become teachers?
Teacher education programs are already dealing with this phenomenon. In the past 10 years I have had no fewer than 15 students who wanted to be teachers, often special education teachers, and who, simply put, did not possess the intellectual prowess to master the content, let alone pass it on to the next generation of students. At least three of those 15 students had IQs in the 70 range and of course could not pass the state teachers exam, even with accommodations. Their failure to pass the exams, though taken multiple times, then reflected badly on our program. The powers that be in the state want to know why all of your students are not successful. If these are the numbers for one professor, in one small program, what must be the case for the hundreds of teacher preparation programs across the country?
To quote my dear, late grandmother, who I know didn’t originate the adage, “You just can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
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