The following is a transcription of the podcast, “Transitioning to College for Students with Learning Disabilities (Audio).”
In this podcast, Karen Golembeski, Assistant Director of Public Policy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and her guest Vincent Varassi discuss the topic of students with learning disabilities transitioning to college.
Vincent Varassi represents Fairleigh Dickenson University in New Jersey and presents nationally on topics of transition to college and alternate post-secondary options for students with learning disabilities. Mr. Varassi served as the campus director of the Regional Center for College Students with Disabilities on the Metropolitan campus in Teaneck, New Jersey.
In this discussion, Mr. Varassi helps listeners gain a better understanding of what high school students with disabilities need to know before they apply to college and how to be successful once on campus.
Karen Golembeski: Thank you for joining us today. Please give our audience a brief description of the Regional Center for College Students with Disabilities.
Vincent Varassi: The Regional Center for College Students with Learning Disabilities is a program that’s actually partially funded by the State of New Jersey through the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education. My center at Fairleigh Dickenson is one of eight centers scattered throughout the State of New Jersey. And of the eight centers, there is one that’s set up to be in consultant with regards to assistive technology. Five of us specialize in learning disabilities and two others work with the deaf and hard of hearing.
Karen Golembeski: Have your programs set an example for other colleges and universities in this field?
Vincent Varassi: I believe we have. At the present time, to the best of my research, there is no other state in the union that has set up regional centers along the lines of New Jersey’s.
Karen Golembeski: You mentioned documentation. One of the top questions students and parents have when discussing college planning is whether or not a student’s IEP is valid, relevant, or necessary in college. Can you clear up some myths for us? Are IEPs valid in college? If not, are there IEP-like plans written at the college level?
Vincent Varassi: Actually, there are no IEPs in college. IEPs come from special education legislation that exists for the K-12 world. It’s the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), most recently revised in 2004, which provides for special education and related services.
IEPs are valid during the time period that students are covered by that law, the time period from age 3 through 21, or until a student graduates from high school. So once the student has taken the [high school] diploma, the assumption is that he has met the goals and objectives of his IEP, is eligible to graduate and move on. At that point, the IEP is no longer a mandated document and the items in the IEP no longer mandate that someone do anything on behalf of the student.
So that’s a major shift for students and parents to grasp. It’s a big shift in thinking about services. Special education does not exist in the post-secondary world as it exists prior to high school graduation.
Now, an IEP is still a wonderful document in terms of the history that it provides of the student’s strengths and weaknesses, gifts and talents that are noted in the student’s IEP under the present levels of educational performance and in other places. So it has information that can be helpful to people who might be working with the student, but it is no longer going to mandate particular accommodations or curricular modifications and things like that.
Karen Golembeski: You mentioned needing valid documentation upon entering college. What type of documentation should a student come to college prepared to provide if the IEP is no longer used?
Vincent Varassi: It’s important for the student to have documentation of his disability which also shows where the disability impacts the student in some substantial way. The new legislation is going to state that a student has to be “otherwise qualified” but the college is going to want to see how that disability substantially limits a life activity. And, in this case, the life activity is learning.
Colleges vary in the type of documentation they expect, and the type of documentation could also change depending on the disability that one is claiming. So a psychiatric disability might involve different documentations than the learning disability.
Typically colleges are looking for at least a psycho-educational evaluation with testing done with adult norms. What that means specifically is that if the IQ test is requested (which probably will be), they’re looking for an adult intelligence scale, not a scale that was done for children. And they’re looking for achievement testing that can point out where, in fact, the student is being affected by his disability.
Some colleges will request more than the psycho-ed evaluation. Some colleges may request that a student also provide neuropsychological testing, which is much more expensive. So it’s really important for the parent working with the school counselor to find out in advance from the colleges what documentation they will be looking for when your son or daughter arrives on that doorstep the following September.
Karen Golembeski: Some students and parents are surprised to learn that college applications do not provide a place to disclose their learning disability. Should students with learning disabilities disclose their disabilities in college? What are the pros and cons of disclosing upon arrival on campus or during the interview process?
Vincent Varassi: There’s a good reason that colleges do not have questions on their application with regard to student disabilities. The first reason is that it would be illegal. We can’t ask people whether or not they have a disability. And people are under no obligation to disclose a disability during the application process. Students should be judged based on whether or not they meet the admission criteria as would anyone else.
Where it gets kind of tricky is the fact that students with disabilities often will have significant highs and significant lows in their ability profile. And sometimes knowledge of the learning disabilities could help explain that.
I’m not a big fan of disclosing during the interview process unless the disability is going to require significant modifications for the student. And that might be a student who has a combination of physical, emotional, and cognitive disabilities where there’s going to be a more extensive plan for accommodations.
If it was my student I would want the school to know that in advance, and I would want to know from the school in advance whether or not they can deliver. Short of that, though, I cannot speak for what goes on in the hearts and minds of every admission counselor in the United States. Some places may be more user-friendly or less user-friendly to a student with a disability. Therefore, I’m a little cautious about telling people during the interview process about the student’s learning disability.
If the student wants to disclose, I’ve seen that done very successfully by students through their essay or sometimes in a letter. But I caution students: If you want to disclose because you feel it’s necessary to explain something about your transcripts or about your SATs, please remember the power of the word “despite.”
A letter to the college that says, “I have a learning disability and I really don’t do well on tests and that’s why my scores are really so crummy but I hope you’ll take me anyway.” is going to get [an unfavorable] reaction.
On the other hand, a letter that speaks to the fact that despite a student’s learning disabilities, despite the fact that he had difficulty with reading, even despite the fact that he’s had difficulty with mathematics for his whole [school] career, despite those issues, he has been successful in other subjects and activities which he adds in the letter. Having the student frame it that way is a much more powerful way to disclose [a learning disability] if the student wants to disclose.
Karen Golembeski: Do students with disabilities have the choice to disclose or not disclose in college? If the student decides not to disclose his learning disability in the beginning of the school year but realizes later on that he needs accommodations and support, can he disclose at a later date?
Vincent Varassi: Yes. Students can disclose it any time. The thing that has to be kept in mind though is the term “reasonable accommodations.” Reasonable accommodations also can be provided in what would be considered a reasonable amount of time.
Now some colleges would require that the student disclose within 30 days at the beginning of a semester, or 30 days prior to the beginning of the semester. Some are more flexible. But, yes, if the student chooses not to disclose when he first attends college, goes through his first semester and realizes, “Wow. I could have really benefited from extended time on tests, or I should have requested that calculator or whatever the accommodation is,” he can request that those be put in place at another time.
I’d like to suggest that all students, whether or not they’re planning to use accommodations, seriously consider disclosing when they are first admitted to the university and before the first semester begins. And I’ll tell you why. If a student wants to try to “do it on his own” and many kids who want to do [so] after they get out of the house and out of high school where they feel that they have been forced to take special education services. If they want to do that, that’s something they can do. But it would be great if they had their documentation in place, their written request for specific accommodations, so that whole process can then be acted on when they decide they need it.
So let’s say a kid comes to college in September, puts his request [for accommodations] in and is endorsed for extended time [on tests] and a quiet test environment. He chooses not to use it. It’s now October 15 and he just blew the midterm and realized, “Wow, I really should have had these accommodations in place.” If he now goes to the Office of Student Disability Services, it will be much easier to activate those accommodations even though he hasn’t used them to that point. It takes a lot longer to do it if you have nothing in place.
Karen Golembeski: In your opinion, what are the top three things high schools can do to help prepare their students with learning disabilities for college?
Vincent Varassi: Well first off, it’s time for us to raise the bar and challenge the students. I spent 27 years in public education and one of the things that I saw happening too much and participated in to some extent, is in our desire to help the students and to “build their self-esteem,” we sometimes did not challenge them to be the extent to which they should have been challenged and to the extent to which they could succeed.
I believe these students can succeed with the proper support, with the right accommodations. And I believe that because I see them succeed every time at Fairleigh Dickenson. I see these wonderful students with learning disabilities coming in and taking course work and studying hard and being successful. And I see many of them going onto graduate school.
So I would say one of the first things that high schools can do is start to challenge them while they still have them in high school and see what they do with the challenge. It’s just information. If a student can handle a more challenging curriculum, that’s information that tells us the level of challenge that the student will be able to handle at college.
If the student is not able to handle that level of challenge, that’s also information and may direct us in a different direction for what that student should be considering for his post-secondary experience. So that would be to me first of the three things: Raise the bar.
The second thing I think schools really need to be able to do is to help students understand the nature of their learning disability. Now, at this time in their lives, in adolescence, what they really want is to be exactly like every other kid. [But] it’s really the time for them to start understanding how they are different and how their learning style and learning disabilities [impact them].
The word disability, by the way, is something they have to start getting comfortable with because it is a legal term and they’ll need to be comfortable with it when they get to college. So whatever we’re calling their issues in high school, whether it’s a “learning style difference” or some other euphemism, they need to know that the legal word is “disability” and to get comfortable with that.
When I meet kids at an interview in my university, I ask them to tell me a little bit about their learning disability and how it affects them in school. And I have to tell you, 90% of the kids I meet can’t answer that question. If they don’t know where they have trouble and why they have trouble, how can we expect them to take the next step which is to advocate for themselves? The student disability services staff [can’t help them] if they don’t know what they need, if they don’t know how they learn.
How are they going to explain their learning disability and what the documentation says if it’s really never been explained to them? So we have to challenge, raise the bar, give them a real college prep level of experience so that their first experience writing the long paper isn’t when they’re living 500 miles away from home on some campus where they don’t have the support network that they had for four years.
Give them that experience ahead of time. Make sure they really understand their learning disabilities. And, I would say, let’s make sure that we believe in them and let them know that we believe in them. Make sure they understand their gifts. Make sure they understand their strengths and guide them to areas that play into their strengths.
Karen Golembeski: Thank you. In conclusion, you mentioned several times that students need to come to college prepared to be self-advocates, knowing how to explain their learning disability, their gifts, their strengths, and how their disability impacts them in school. Do you have any final advice for how high school students can start preparing themselves to be self-advocates while in college?
Vincent Varassi: It’s important for high schools to prepare students to self-advocate. And I do have a couple of ideas on how they can start doing that.
The last school district where I worked had a program in study strategies. In the upper level of that study strategies curriculum, there was a lesson on preparing kids to transition to college. And one of the teachers in that district came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. In the spring of junior year, the students became responsible for writing the front part to their IEPs. Each student had to write an essay which would [later] become the Present Levels of Educational Performance section in his IEP.
And you look at me and ask, “How are they going to do that?” Well, what this teacher did was to meet with each student and construct with the student a carefully structured interview. Next students had to make an appointment to interview their case manager. During that interview, they would ask the case manager to explain to them what all that stuff was in their file. What was all that testing about that I took? What does it show that my strengths are? What does it show that my talents are? What does it show that I’m really kind of weak at and will have trouble with?
The interview was structured and the kids took notes or record it. Then they would move from the case manager to the guidance counselor where they would ask similar questions. Guidance counselors tend to have even more current information than the people on the team because the guidance counselors are there every day. Their offices are more accessible to teachers. So the counselor may have some day-to-day feedback to offer students about, for example, “What Mrs. Jones is thinking about their work in mathematics or social studies.”
Next the student would go interview that teacher and ask the same questions. And then they have to interview two teachers and ask the teachers they thought were the student’s strengths, what they were doing well in class, and what some of teacher’s concerns were. What were some things that teachers thought they might be able to do better? What are some accommodations that they might need that maybe they weren’t receiving but the teachers (through their informal observation of the student on a day to day basis) thought might serve them well?
Now the students have this tremendous amount of data which they took back to their study skills class. Working together [and using the data collected], they would start to construct the essay that became the front piece to the IEP. Then, to take this idea of self-advocacy a step further, each of those students conducted the first part of their IEP meeting. And they came dressed in shirts and ties, or dresses. Those IEP meetings were just wonderful experiences. You could see that the student was a half-inch taller than he’d been just the morning before because he came in and was excited about what he was going to do. In many cases, their parents were just floored by the fact that here was their kid explaining to the room [full of adults] things that sometimes the parent themselves didn’t understand.
We’ve all been at those IEP meetings where the jargon starts flying and the explanations of the disabilities are traveling around and sometimes it can be lost on someone who doesn’t do this for a living every single day. And so a parent might watch their own kid explaining information that maybe they didn’t quite understand. Sometimes I saw why people were asked to participate where a parent found their son or daughter explaining to them stuff the parent have been trying to hide from them from the first 16 years of the kid’s life. And there was their son or daughter conducting that IEP meeting and explaining about [their learning disability] to the [IEP team]. And parents saw that, “Wow, they’re okay with it.” That is one of the most empowering exercises that we can offer students so that they can take their experience to college and continue to become advocates for themselves.
Karen Golembeski: Vincent, thank you for giving us so much of your time today.
This transcription was made possible by a grant from the American Legion Child Welfare Foundation.
