By Ilise from New Jersey (Parent)
Published: February 25 2009

My son Jay was identified with multiple learning disabilities when he was just a toddler. When he was admitted to a school in New York for special education students, no one knew whether he could ever learn to read. I do not know where in his soul he found the drive and motivation, but he learned to do what many people said could not be done — he learned to read at age nine.

Jay’s school was filled with specialists who custom tailored his classes to meet his special needs. But then came the greater challenge. Could he learn subjects such as history, literature, and foreign languages in a regular classroom?

When Jay arrived in a regular middle school, he had compensation strategies thanks to successful early intervention. But his new regular classroom teachers did not know about strategies that would be appropriate for him. They were untrained and unaccustomed to his special needs.

Jay’s accommodations were written into his IEP, but the school staff and district administrators refused to read them. So, it was perhaps not surprising that they discouraged Jay from attending his own IEP meetings. Administrators told Jay that he needed to work harder in class and needed the meeting time for coursework. And they told me that he would be traumatized by the reports about himself from the IEP team.

As his parent, I felt that Jay needed to attend every IEP meeting. If he was going to understand what was happening in his education, he had to be part of the process. I couldn’t imagine a successful IEP without his buy-in. He had a far better understanding of what was really going on because he was in the classroom.

At one of his IEP meetings, the staff asserted that Jay had made so much progress that he no longer needed an IEP, and that he should be found ineligible for special education services. They were basing this partly on a recent 6th grade standardized test score. There wasn’t much logic to their argument.

The staff asserted that Jay got 100% on a recent spelling test. This was important because we had heated controversy about whether Jay’s IEP should require un-graded spelling due to his learning disability. The staff argued that Jay should be graded on his spelling in light of his remarkably high reading comprehension score on the recent standardized test — even though the score was inconsistent with Jay’s history and with other recent scores.

Then, quite unexpectedly, my son spoke up. He softly explained that the 100% was actually ten words on a quiz that was a make-up — hardly a breakthrough score. This was also inconsistent with his personal educational history. More importantly, he then explained why his reading comprehension score on the standardized test was so high. Jay said that he never actually read the paragraphs that were included with the test!

Never read the paragraphs?

Well, the paragraphs were about the terracotta warriors in X’ian China. Coincidentally, we had toured these same warriors in person, five years earlier. The paragraphs were too long to bother with, Jay explained, so when he realized they were asking about the warriors he had already seen, he just answered the questions based on his prior knowledge. So, Jay spent his entire time (including his extended time) answering the multiple-choice questions. He reported they were easy questions: What were the warriors used for? (For defense) Were they alive? (No, they were in a tomb) What was special about them? (No two are alike). Jay knew most of the answers, guessed the rest, and voila — high score!

If Jay had not been at that meeting, the school would have used those two test scores to end his special education services. By speaking up, my son set the record straight and saved his own eligibility.

Some things are teachable; others have to be learned. This podcast discusses things you have to learn on your own. Hopefully, you’ll do it while you’re in college!

“The rise in the number of students with learning disabilities in the postsecondary    education setting has also brought to light that there is a large failure rate for this population.  Vogel and Adelman (1990) refer to this phenomenon as the “revolving door syndrome” (p. 331). In fact, students with disabilities, in all disability categories, who enroll in postsecondary institutions, are less likely to complete a degree or certificate than are their peers without disabilities. (Post-outcomes Network of the National Center of Secondary Education and Transition, 2002)

Students with learning disabilities who have performed well in high school are generally not very concerned with college success; they are accustomed to working hard and doing well. Their high school accomplishments, however, may give them a false sense of confidence. These students, and their parents for that matter, fail to understand that because high school and college are vastly different systems, there is little correlation between high school performance and college success.

Let’s consider COLLEGE SUCCESS to be an equation. What are its components? First, there are four critical factors that must be present: normal intelligence, desire to go (determination), knowledge and acceptance of one’s disability, and willingness to seek help (in fact, successful students consider seeking help a strength, not a weakness).

When all of these factors are present, we can safely assume success is possible. However, this is not sufficient to presume success is probable. To the four critical factors we must add:  preparation for transition, thorough navigational knowledge of the college system, and a good college fit.

Our equation now looks like this:

COLLEGE SUCCESS = Four critical factors + preparation + navigational knowledge + good fit

As for preparation, students must adjust the methods and habits that served them well in high school. Given the differences between the two systems, high school behaviors are no longer effective.  Among things that will change are course load, built-in structure, employment hours, time allocated for homework and studying, study methods, IEPs, etc.

Suddenly, it becomes understandable why college success isn’t a natural consequence of strong high school performance. If all the rules of the game change, students unfamiliar with the new rules find themselves a stranger in a strange land. Everything they have known to be true is no longer.  It’s as if the rug has been pulled out from under them. Students who continue to operate under high school “precepts” sink fast and are soon up to their neck in academic quicksand.

As a college Learning Specialist from 1993 -2006, I witnessed academic quicksand, or “shock and awe” phenomenon, as I call it, all the time. For example:

1) Students who only had to read over material in high school to do well on an exam find that they fail college exams with this passive technique.

2) Students who spent one to two hours on homework in high school are stunned to find that is only the tip of the iceberg in college.

3) Students who stayed home in high school because they had a headache were easily able to recoup from their absence; in college, missing a class is akin to digging oneself a hole. College instructors expect students to return prepared with current homework and ready to move on with the rest of the class.

4) Frequent tests and quizzes in high school force students to periodically “study”. In college, tests are infrequent–a course may have only a midterm and a final. Therefore, tests encompass   material that may be two months old and once again unfamiliar. In addition, fewer exams means each one carries more weight toward the final grade.

5) It is expected that for each college credit, a student will have two-three hours of work outside the classroom. Many high school students aren’t used to that much work in a week. For example, nine college credits means sitting in class nine hours a week plus having between 18 – 27 hours of homework or studying.  Therefore, just nine credits equates to between 27 – 36 hours a week.

6) In high school, a student’s day is pre-structured, leaving few choices. In college, a student may have only two to three hours of class a day, leaving the rest of the time “free”.

7) Students have the protection of an IEP in high school and are not responsible for asking for their due. Teachers often reach out with extra help, and parents speak up if students don’t receive what is promised. In other words, students are passive recipients. In college, the onus shifts to the student to make certain the accommodations and extra help are delivered.

This is just the beginning. Students who never used an academic planner in high school often learn the hard way that they can’t get along without one. Students who worked 20 hours a week may have been able to maintain their grades in high school. In college, a 20-hour work week can be academic suicide. The list goes on and on….

Those who enter college without knowledge of its unique challenges inadvertently make mistakes that quickly set them on a downward spiral. Those students who have a fundamental knowledge of the college system and have mastered the skills and strategies that will keep them in college have the best odds of success. Why? Because they’ve already had a chance to practice these new skills in high school. When it’s time for college, they can hit the ground running. Self-advocacy doesn’t fall on them like a ton of bricks. They already know how to read and retain textbook material. They understand that studying isn’t simply looking over notes. They realize the importance of having time management skills.

If you are the parent of a high school student with learning differences, you can subscribe to a list serve whose goal is to increase college success for our students. Sign up at http://www.conquercollegewithld.com.