Our son was assured that his school would provide the necessary support and ended up having to fend for himself. They were ill prepared for a student with a LD. It is a private elite school where the normal entrance requirement was to finish in the top 10 of the graduating H.S. class. Our son received an athletic scholarship and would not have been excepted otherwise. Any contacts or directions would be appreciated.
accomodations in college
If your son’s testing and thus his IEP mandated certain accomodations, he should have been given those. I found however that some accomodations are more easily provided than others. My own son receives extended time on his tests in college. His testing lists several more accomodations he should be given such as books on tape (they don’t exist for most of his college textbooks).
To give you better advice, it would help to know what accomodations your son’s testing mandated for him but nevertheless I can sadly well believe he was pretty much left to fend for himself despite all promises made. Schools and colleges talk a good game before we sign on the old dotted line but once we’re on board and paying tuition, we can find out most of the talk was sadly just that - talk.
Good luck to you and your son.
College son
He’s had a very up & down year. He asked for help, tutors and they were very slow in providing him one. In fact one of the tutors actually tutored him in the wrong course content. They did not know the professor’s content. It was an absolute disaster. He went back to the professor and advised him of it. They told him they would get him another, but again they were slow and he ended up being way too far behind and had to withdraw from the class, dropping him below 12 credits for the semester.
The spring semester started off in high hopes but soon had the familiar look of the fall semester. He enrolled in a class, it was cancelled, they took 5-7 days to re enroll him in completely different class and of course he struggled because he was several assignment behind when he started the class. He is transferring this fall to a state university in a near by state. One, which we were impressed with earlier. Private schools are not the place for a LD student that needs support. Everything was a struggle to get them to do things. He even had his advisor tell him that ADD is not a LD! Seldom were his instructors notified and when those that were, they seldom remembered and failed to provide him with additional options.
He is a typical ADD student, additional testing, test can be read and answers given verbally, books on tapes, etc. all the classical accommodations.
:oops:
Re: What recourse do College LD students have
Boy, I can see why you wanted recourse :( I’d have written a request for a refund of my tuition… if it was a full scholarship, then something you had to pay for… does seem like he was excepted, not accepted.
gosh!
That sounds lawsuit worthy to me! Have you consulted a lawyer? You should totally try and do as Sue says and get a refund for what all you had to shell out for this school. I hope your child does well at the other University, he might get enough schooling there to go back to the other one for a masters degree just out of spite, eh?! Good luck to you and your child. I do not understand how some Universities do not want to follow the laws that they have to follow, you know? I think that is an elitist mode of thought. What is funny is that a fair amount of learning disabled (and I consider add to be a learning disability) students wind up learning how to manage themselves academically to the point of doing very well at University, sometimes we learning disabled students at University wind up doing better than our peers in certain academic situations, so go figure.
Merlinjones is right in that all schools have to obey the laws. However, the laws are *very* different than in K-12; the school does have the right to let the students “fend for themselves.” THey simply have to provide access to the curriculum. If they are fiercely competitive they can just be that way. Most schools like that are more upfront about being willing to provide accommodations — *if and when* the student makes the proper requests with all the right paperwork — but that essentially the student must be able to compete at a pretty intense level… which means more intense because the accommodations don’t exactly level the playing field, they just remove most of the land mines.
How is he doing at fending for himself? Can he get an accommodation to take a reduced course load and still be considered full time? (I know it is done.) First year of college can be overwhelming even for “good” students, especially at competitive places; it’s unfortunately normal to feel fairly certain you really don’t belong there but … often that feeling is an illusion.
It’s also possible that the school wanted him for his body… that athletic body… and doesn’t really care whether he gets an education or not ;(