Reasonable Accommodations In Schools

Point:

I feel that this part of the debate has made a good point. Not only is providing reasonable accommodations give all students an “fair and level playing field” (p.175) regardless of seen or unseen disabilities, but it is also the school obligations under section 504 under the Americans with Disabilities Act. I feel that asking for extended time on homework and test taking is a reasonable accommodation that is also quite easy to follow. This accommodation does not interfere with the other students learning environment and in many cases many higher education students also request to take test in a distraction free environment in a school-testing center. Reasonable accommodations made for students with learning disabilities shows that student’s are not carbon copies of each other and every learns and takes test differently.

Counterpoint:

The counterpoint sates that “It is probably prudent to consider all requests, but the notion that all request must be honored is faulty” (p 175). Also, the text stats that there should be “solid evidence” to “prove” a student has a learning disability. I feel that it is not up to the teacher to determine if something is considered a

reasonable accommodation, or to decide who gets to use that right; that is for the intuitions that the teacher works for to decided. Even if a teacher is in disagreement with agreeing to any of the accommodations, it is not the student’s fault and should not be punished because the teacher does not agree with the school idea of what a reasonable accommodation is. For example, if a student is need of an extra 5 days to turn in papers so the student can gain assess to the writing center, a teacher may feel that the extra time unrealistic for every written assignment, but instead of denying the accommodation, the teacher may have and option to (with the agreement with the student) to reduce the days to 2 days instead of 5. The key is to work with the student to help the student finish his or her graduations plan.
Reasonable vs unreasonable accommodations
What I view as a reasonable accommodations is not cut and dry.

What I believe is that a reasonable accommodations is a service that can be provide to a student to help the student achieve success in his or her classes as long as it does not interfere with the learning environment of others. Some of them would include: extended time for assignments and test, a distraction free environment provided, preferred test taking times (AM vs PM) the day the test is to be given, assistive technology such as a writer, spell check or a reader/scribe (voice to text). An unreasonable accommodation would be excusing a student from all written assignments with out giving a replacement. Just because a student struggles to learn like the rest of his or her peers, doesn’t mean the student isn’t able to

learn.