College Students with Disabilities

On the last class day before Thanksgiving break, I was informed by the Chair of my department that a disability student had filed a grievance against me charging I had discriminated against her when I refused to allow her to retake a test she had failed. Needless to say, I had a terrible holiday as I experienced all the stages of grieving for my life which the student might well take from me: my career, my house, my car, my pets. I saw myself living in a homeless shelter. The deepest of depressions covered me; I am still in its throes.

The situation has spiraled out of control. The student, unbeknownst to any of us at my school, had already filed charges with the Office of Civil Rights against another department. She contacted them to add my charges to it. I am totally emotionally labile: sometimes I'm hopeful, sometimes I want to run, most of the time I despair. How could anyone charge me with discriminating against them?

If any good has come from this very negative situation, it is that I have become aware for the first time of how betrayed students with disabilities feel about our American educational system and those, like me, who work in it. For that reason, I would like to focus my Doctoral Study Project of the learning disabilities of developmental mathematics students in community colleges, i.e., my community college, and how changing teaching practices might increase LD student retention.

The Problem

College Algebra is the gatekeeper course to most Americans’ baccalaureate goals. According to Bailey (2010), 60% of community college entering freshmen must take at least one developmental (remedial) course and, often, that course is a remedial mathematics course. In may experience as a community college developmental mathematics instructor for the past 10 and a half years, perhaps one-quarter of my developmental mathematics students have diagnosed learning disabilities. Baily (2010) reports, only about 30% of all students referred to developmental mathematics courses ever graduate, and many times do not even enroll. Instead, their dreams of a better life are put on hold, perhaps permanently.

McLaughlin, Knoop and Holliday (2005) cited Fleischner and Manheimer (1997): 5% to 6% of college students have significant trouble with mathematics; teaching in community college developmental mathematics, I would say the percentage is closer to 50%. In the same article, they cited Woodrich (2000): 3% of children in the United States have learning disabilities (LD); my experience with adults ages 17 years and older is that it is not at all unusual for a quarter (25%) of my students in some developmental mathematics classes to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and therefore subject to accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These accommodations most often consist of longer testing times, low-distraction testing environments, note takers, signers for the hearing impaired, service dogs, special seating in class, and permission to use notes on tests, both nationally (Ofiesh, 2007) and at my community college. Nevertheless, at least half of my students covered by the ADA fail my classes, and some fail repeatedly; some, in frustration, file grievances with the Office of Civil Rights, thus causing colleges great expenditures of time and treasure to justify themselves.

Accommodations by themselves will not allow postsecondary students with LD, and mathematics learning disabilities (MD) in particular, to succeed academically. The reasons, according to Ofiesh (2007), are that most accommodation research has taken place in elementary and secondary schools; Ofiesh states that most secondary students with LD never progress to college, so that the postsecondary LD population is very different from their secondary counterparts. Also, says Ofiesh (2007), the depth and difficulty of material studied on the postsecondary level can be very different from that studied on the secondary level. Much more research remains to be performed on the effectiveness of postsecondary accommodation types.

Project Proposal

Perhaps the most effective interventions for students with MD and students experiencing difficulties learning mathematics are in the classroom (McGlaughlin et al., 2005). Finding appropriate pedagogical/andragogical activities for each subtype of MD might prove very beneficial to the retention of all students who find mathematics overwhelmingly difficult. I propose to perform a mixed method project in which teach two beginning algebra classes, both with MD students. In one class, I will use special teaching methods geared toward facilitating mathematics mastery for each of the MD subtypes: working memory deficits, non-verbal (mathematical) reasoning deficits, visuo-spatial deficits (inability to read or create graphs), and reading comprehension deficits (McGlaughlin et al., 2005). I will conduct the other class with the usual lecture method accompanied by handouts and some student board work. At the end of the semester, I will statistically compare the two classes’ pass rates and, if time allows, I will follow the students’ progress in the following class; retention at my school is calculated that way: pass rate in the present class and the performance of each student in the subsequent mathematics class. I will also perform indepth qualitative interviews with some of the students and survey research with all the students.

Literature Review

There is a paucity of research on retention and effective interventions with postsecondary students diagnosed with MD; that is the result of my own brief search into the literature, and of Ofiesh (2007), McLaughlin et al. (2005), and Geary (2004). That means I might be able to actually contribute to the knowledge base of postsecondary LD literature. Articles I have so far discovered that will add to my background knowledge of the subject follow, including articles used to create this discussion.

Bailey, T., & Sung-Woo, C. (2010). Developmental Education in Community Colleges. (Prepared for: The White House Summit on Community College). CCRC issue brief (p. 8). New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University. Retrieved from http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ContentByType.asp?t=1

Geary, D. C. (2004). Mathematics and Learning Disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(1), 4-15. doi:10.1177/00222194040370010201

Gregg, N. (2007). Underserved and Unprepared: Postsecondary Learning Disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22(4), 219-228. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2007.00250.x

McGlaughlin, S. M., Knoop, A. J., & Holliday, G. A. (2005). Differentiating students with mathematics difficulty in college: mathematics disabilities vs. no diagnosis. Learning Disabilities Quarterly, 28(3), 223-232. Retrieved from http://www.cldinternational.org/Publications/LDQ.asp

Mull, C., Sitlington, P. L., & Alper, S. (2001). Postsecondary Education for Students With Learning Disabilities: A Synthesis of the Literature. Exceptional Children, 68(1), 97-118. Retrieved from http://www.cec.sped.org

National Center for Education Statistics. (2000). Postsecondary students with disabilities:
Enrollment, services, and persistence. (Brief) (pp. 1-4). Washington, D.C.: U. S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000092.pdf

Ofiesh, N. (2007). Math, Science, and Foreign Language: Evidence-Based Accommodation Decision Making at the Postsecondary Level. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22(4), 237-245. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2007.00252.x

Osmon, D., Smerz, J., Braun, M., & Plambeck, E. (2006). Processing Abilities Associated with Math Skills in Adult Learning Disability. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 28(1), 84-95. doi:10.1080/13803390490918129

Raghubar, K. P., Barnes, M. A., & Hecht, S. A. (2010). Working memory and mathematics: A review of developmental, individual difference, and cognitive approaches. Learning and Individual Differences, 20(2), 110-122. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2009.10.005

Sternberg, R. J. (1998). Abilities Are Forms of Developing Expertise. Educational Researcher, 27(3), 11-20. doi:10.3102/0013189X027003011

Tolar, T. D., Lederberg, A., & Fletcher, J. (2009). A structural model of algebra achievement: computational fluency and spatial visualisation as mediators of the effect of working memory on algebra achievement. Educational Psychology, 29(2), 239-266. doi:10.1080/01443410802708903

Implications

If I were to find that professor initiated pedagogical methodologies could positively impact the retention rates of MD students, that would motivate research on college campuses around the world on specific teaching activities for each MD subtype. Countless persons’ lives could be spared the humiliation of repeated failures and the talents and intelligences of those individuals would benefit society, as would their collective ability to pay higher taxes because their incomes would increase.
Date Modified: 19 Dec 10 10:20 PM MST