Students with Learning Disabilities: Rethinking How We Assess College Readiness
Part 1 of a 5-part Series
Co-authored by Adam Wouk, Jake Weld, and Joanna Lilley
We generally think about GPAs, SAT, ACTs, APs, and cacophony of other alphabet soup acronyms when we consider “College Prep” and whether or not a student is demonstrating college readiness. They are tried, true, time tested, canon. And they predict graduation within 6 years about 62% of the time - which, by any grading scale, is an “F.”
It may be time to completely rethink how we assess a student’s readiness for college.
The preponderance of the traditional measures are designed to evaluate one thing, in a vacuum: academic accomplishments achieved while in high school. That academic snapshot is then used as a tool to evaluate a student’s likelihood of academic success their freshman year of college. On the surface this approach makes some sense: if a student knows a couple of the causes of the Russian Revolution in high school (autocratic rule by the Tsars, working conditions of the peasant class), it stands to reason they can learn a few more reasons (the rise of industry, war in Europe, food scarcity) if they are in college.
This model is relatively adept at predicting academic prowess - and if academic prowess were the only barrier to college success then a continued reliance on these scales and indicators would be warranted. Alas, students do not drop out of college because of an inability to comprehend or recite additional causes of the Russian Revolution.
While wholesale research on this issue is surprisingly lacking (or not surprisingly lacking, considering who we rely on for widespread research...), most statistics point to finances being the primary reason students do not make it through school. While finances (including high tuition, too much time working, etc.) are primary, the next set of reasons have to do with behaviors, choices, experiences, expectations, adulting, etc. None of these reasons have anything to do with academic prowess, intelligence, or the ability to learn.
Content knowledge is important – having a foundation in reading, writing, and mathematics is a valuable ingredient for college success, but even brilliant students eventually face things they don’t know which is, of course, the point of college. It is at that point that internalized and transferable skills become more important than knowledge.
Rather than relying only on the old standby tests for evaluating college readiness, consider these three questions:
Can the student identify if they are struggling (accurately, early, and independently) in all of the core domains (academically, socially, relationally, in independent living skills, executive functioning, etc.)?
Can the student independently access available supports and services?
Can the student independently apply the supports and services that are available?
If a student (and family) can answer “YES!” to all three of the above, then curriculum challenges like anti-derivatives, iambic pentameter, and thermodynamics quickly become irrelevant. That is because the skill set exists to turn challenges into learning, and barriers into the building blocks of long-term success.
However, if the answer to any one of those questions is not “YES!” (across multiple domains) then a student’s academic capacity or potential may never have a chance to thrive.
What if the challenges are about solving roommate issues, managing a budget, making friends, or navigating the red tape of campus bureaucracies? What if the challenges are social, relational, or in domains of executive functioning or independent living skills? What if they have to do with self-care, healthy choices, substance use or abuse, anxiety, or depression?
Any one of these areas can conspire to upend a brilliant or smart-enough student’s transition to college. Does that mean a student should not go to college? That they are not ready? That they should give up on their dreams? Absolutely not. But it does mean that students and parents will be well-served by honestly assessing the entire landscape of college readiness holistically, and not just relying on the narrow view provided by looking through the soda straw of academic prowess - or worse, “where a student is accepted.”
Even students and families who take this holistic view of college readiness into account in their college search often fall into a second set of traps - reading college websites with high-school-eyes and listening to college admissions counselors with high-school-ears:
“The college we’re looking at is incredibly small and nurturing,” you say.
“The professors will know my student by name,” you remark.
“They have an incredible learning and student support office,” you exclaim!
In each case, colleges and families are mostly, and most-likely correct. In fact, some colleges do a great job at creating low-friction environments where students can quickly and easily access services with limited bureaucratic entanglement.
And yet, students and families cannot forget: The fundamental paradigm of college is that regardless of what support or service is available, the student must first be able to independently answer “YES!” to all three of the questions in order to get the support they need.
To learn more about this critical paradigm shift, coming out of high school and into college, please stay tuned for Part 2, which addresses the paradigm shift from high school to college.
In the meantime, when considering college readiness an honest evaluation of a student’s interests, strengths, and needs is a good place to start. The next step is to identify what a student is reliably able to do independently, and an honest assessment of the external structures (school, family, coaches, tutors, etc.) that contribute to a student’s success. How much of that will continue? How much can they begin to do for themselves?
Do not forget: skills can be taught, learned, and practiced, and while a student certainly does not need to have independence mastered before they leave for college, they will be well served if they have the self-awareness and honesty to recognize when they need help, and the strength to ask for it on their own.
For questions or comments contact:
Adam Wouk via email.
Jake Weld via email.
