LEARNING DISABILITY DOCUMENTATION
Students requesting accommodations and/or support services under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and/or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 must provide documentation of the existence of a learning disability which substantially limits a major life activity. In order to accurately determine the appropriate accommodations, the documentation should be current, within 3 years. It may be appropriate to extend the testing limit to 5 years if the testing is reflective of the student’s current functioning. In all cases, the documentation should be appropriate to the anticipated setting.
Documentation should include, but not be limited to, the following:
1. Qualifications of the Evaluator. Professional conducting assessments, rendering diagnosis of learning disabilities, and making recommendations for appropriate accommodations must be qualified to do so. Comprehensive training and direct experience with an adolescent and adult LD population is essential. The name, title and professional credentials of the evaluator, including information about license or certification as well as the area of specialization, employment and state/province in which individual practices should be clearly stated in the documentation.
2. Comprehensive Assessment. The neuropsychological or psycho-educational evaluation for the diagnosis of a specific learning disability must provide clear and specific evidence that a learning disability does or does not exist. Assessment, and any resulting diagnosis, should consist of and be based on a comprehensive assessment battery which does not rely on any one test or subtest. This assessment should include a diagnostic interview to determine medical, developmental, psychosocial, family, academic, and employment histories. It should include assessments of:
*Cognitive-A complete battery, appropriate for an adult population, with all subtest and standard scores reported. One of the following would be required: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery- Revised: Tests of Cognitive Ability, Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test.
*Achievement-A complete battery relevant to area(s) of suspected disability(s), often to include a reading assessment, with all subtest and standard scores reported. Examples of commonly used tools are: Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery-Revised: Tests of Achievement, Stanford Test of Academic Skills (TASK), Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT), and Nelson-Denny Reading Skills Test.
*Information Processing-An examination of the student’s processing strengths and weaknesses to include areas such as short and long term memory, processing speed, metacognition, etc. gathered from the comprehensive assessment, diagnostic interview, and examiner’s observations of test behavior.
3. Diagnosis. Identification of a specific Learning Disability based upon the information from the comprehensive assessment and a diagnostic interview. The diagnosis must:
-indicate a substantial limitation
-rule out alternatives
-indicate reasonable accommodations specific to the diagnosed disability
4. Clinical Summary. A diagnostic summary based on a comprehensive evaluation process is a necessary component of the report. The clinical summary should include:
-demonstration of the evaluator’s having ruled out alternative explanations for academic problems as a result of poor education, poor motivation and/or study skills, emotional problems, attentional problems and cultural language differences;
-indication of how patterns in the student’s cognitive ability, achievement and information processing reflect the presence of a learning disability;
-indication of the substantial limitation to learning or other major life activity presented by the learning disability and the degree to which it impacts the individual in the learning context for which accommodations are being requested;
-indication as to why specific accommodations are needed and how the effects of the specific disability are accommodated;
-any record of prior accommodation or auxiliary aids, including information about specific conditions under which the accommodations were used;
-specific recommendations for accommodations as well as an explanation as to why each accommodation is being recommended.