How much accommodation should a learning disability get?

[tcnelson 1]

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where is the logic in marking down a student's geography paper based on their spelling?

it reinforces the fact that spelling is important in all situations, not just english class.

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Test the knowledge of the subject in which they are being examined, not the subject they took last Wednesday. To do otherwise is astoundingly illogical.

once again, i completely disagree. the purpose of education is to teach and learn on a permanent basis, not a temporary one. i realise that we all do not use everything we were taught on a daily basis and that some things never get used at all by most people but, implying to students that poor spelling is only a hindrance in english class would be folly.

i see the situation as akin to marking off for poor algebra in calculus class. just like algebra, english is used everywhere and it needs to be used correctly.

"Don't talk to me like that assface...I don't work for you yet." - Fletch
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[kelpdiver 2]

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As someone said: spelling counts for an english major, to an english major spelling is INFORMATION. which is the whole point of testing anyway, to see if the information was retained - hopefully for future use.

Spelling is no more important to an English major than it is to a scientist. It's equally important for both to communicate ideas in their writing. Minor misspellings are tolerable, numerous ones distort the message. Given that entire NASA missions have been lost because of misunderstandings in communication (typically with mismatched units), I hope Kallend ignores that directive.

I also wonder what you think English majors actually do at college. I can assure you it's not spent working on their spelling.

I would think the bigger problem these days is not that people can't spell, but because they can't write. I so rarely use a pen instead of a keyboard now that I fear I'd be useless in a college testing environment now.

[AlexCrowley 0]

Yes, communication is important, clarity is important. Being semi-literate would appear to be a major issue for any role that requires a modicum of communication.

Where is the different between communication and comunication.

In the technology space this is usually handled by never allowing the engineers to write any documentation, instead we hand it off to the documentation specialist, who takes all the badly spelled words, shitty grammar and incomplete thoughts and cobbles it into a readable and correct set of instructions. This is true not only for customers materials but internal documentation.

Any documentation that I prepare is proof read, spell checked and edited for brevity before general consumption. My ability to spell anything other than the right syntax to make my systems do what i tell them really doesnt enter in to it.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[kallend 2,115]

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We had a blind engineer working here for a while. He was a good engineer, but did need some accommodations (extra time to get to meetings, a special keyboard, a voice synthesizer.) I think most teachers/managers can come to their own determination of what "reasonable" is.

We see this in skydiving too. We've taken paraplegics and even quadriplegics up to do tandems, and one guy has come back a dozen times. Probably wouldn't take someone who needs a respirator, though, because jumping with the machine is pretty unreasonable, and the risk of jumping without it is unacceptable. You don't need hard rules to see that.

I have no problem with the LD student using a dictionary or a spell checker. I DO have a problem with any student that hands in poorly written reports because it's an engineering class so they don't need to make an effort.

I don't have a problem giving extra time to take exams to a LD student. I DO have a problem with being told I "shall" use an arbitrary 1.5 multiplier for the extra time. Where did this magic value of 1.5 come from anyway?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,088]

>I DO have a problem with any student that hands in poorly written
> reports because it's an engineering class so they don't need to
> make an effort.

Right, but I bet you could easily determine whether or not the poorly written paper was due to dyslexia or due to a lack of effort - and would be willing to take that into account.

>I DO have a problem with being told I "shall" use an arbitrary 1.5
> multiplier for the extra time. Where did this magic value of 1.5
> come from anyway?

From some bureaucrat whose job it is to come up with arbitrary numbers. They are best ignored.

[AlexCrowley 0]

what he said :)

Kallend, as I mention in my PM to you, I find hand writing things counterproductive. Do you allow your students to type during exams? (some schools forbid it , except as an accomodation to a disability).

Seems that the main trust of your original post wasnt about learning disabilities at all but to do with stupid academic bureaucrats.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[mr2mk1g 10]

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I DO have a problem with any student that hands in poorly written reports because it's an engineering class so they don't need to make an effort.

As would I. Engineers need to be able to spell, thus it is appropriate that their spelling is taken into account in their engineering examination mark. But I'm talking about lower down the academic ladder when schools are examining individual basic subjects.

[mr2mk1g 10]

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the purpose of education is to teach and learn on a permanent basis

The purpose of a geography GCSE it to tell the world about how much this 16 year old knows about geography. It is impossible to tell how well the individual spells or even how well they communicate by looking at the results of their geography exam. Their poor mark might just as well have be the result of a failure to know what an oxbow lake is. Their mark in their geography exam certainly doesn't tell you much about their communication skills.

The purpose of an English language GCSE on the other hand is to tell the world how much this 16 year old knows about the construction and use of the English language. The exam would have focused on such skills as spelling, grammar, syntax, parsing etc. Failure to know about one of these elements of the course will loose the candidate marks.

I simply believe that if a school wants to test a 16 year olds knowledge of geography they should test their knowledge of geography. Not French, nor history, nor wood working, nor any of the other important subjects kids learn.

If this is done, the mark in geography actually tells you something about how much they know about geography, otherwise the result is muddied by all sorts of other indicators about other subjects and the outcome is the exam mark is entirely meaningless.

Maybe they know something about geography... maybe they don't... maybe they're just a crappy speller... who knows? The exam certainly doesn't help us figure it out.

[gmanpilot 0]

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We do not accommodate blind airline pilots...

Seeing is essential to performint the task of flying. If you can rationally determine that spelling there, their, and they're is essential to performing the tasks involved in physics and not necessarily to the job of an engineer, I would think that it is appropriate to grade a physics student on that skillset.

_________________________________________
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[kallend 2,115]

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We do not accommodate blind airline pilots...

Seeing is essential to performint the task of flying. If you can rationally determine that spelling there, their, and they're is essential to performing the tasks involved in physics and not necessarily to the job of an engineer, I would think that it is appropriate to grade a physics student on that skillset.

All US universities and colleges are obliged by national accreditation criteria to have a general education component, and to prepare students for the workplace and for the duties of citizenship, and for lifelong learning. It is impossible to predict in advance the extent to which good writing is going to be required in anyone's career so we (and all other colleges and universites) have to adopt the position that writing skills are essential to all students in higher education who aspire to some kind of professional career. We cannot separate out physics as different from engineering or medicine.

It is also pedagogically unsound to declare that good writing is important only in certain courses and that anything goes in others.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Shotgun 1]

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Is it fair to have a reduced standard for passing a class for some students compared with the others? Why are some students to be expected to spell properly, and others not?

I am taking an online class right now, where a large part of the course involves posting in a discussion forum. I am a bit disturbed by the fact that at least half of the other students do not seem to be able to post without a large number of spelling errors; some are so bad that I can hardly understand what they are saying. I can't see any excuse for this, as they should have access to a dictionary or spell check, so I am guessing that it's mostly a case of laziness. It's not an English class, but it seems to me that spelling should at least be taken into some account. Perhaps they all have this learning disability that affects their ability to spell...

(And now that I've said that, I probably have spelling errors in this post.)