In my experience, most independent schools approach academic support based on a convergence of two different models: a medical model for diagnosing students’ difficulties and a public-school model of providing special education that includes individual or small-group tutoring. After working in this area for more than 22 years, and consulting with independent schools all over the world, I believe these paradigms for learning centers, testing, and accommodations are outdated.
Now, it’s true that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires independent schools to provide reasonable and appropriate accommodations to students with diagnosed learning disabilities who demonstrate a “functional limitation” in a “major life activity” including learning. However, it is also true that not every student evaluated and diagnosed with a specific disability requires accommodations.
The three big issues as I see them:
- Testing is often the first solution for students who appear to struggle in school, and the current “trend to test” has gotten out of hand.
- The labels that stem from testing often mask more than they reveal about a student’s cognitive function and academic performance.
- The resulting boilerplate recommendations, such as “preferential seating” and “extended time,” are attempts to provide simple solutions to complex problems without considering other more effective supports for students.
A School-wide, Collaborative Model
To effectively tackle these issues, we must initiate a new conversation and action plan — which isn’t about testing, learning disabilities, ADHD, or extended time. At Winsor School (MA), an all-girls day school for grades 5–12 serving 460 students, we have shifted from a learning center model of academic support to a school-wide, collaborative model. This means that academic support practices are driven not by a perceived need or a demand for accommodations. Instead, the model is driven by the student-teacher relationship.
New Conversations and Empowering Language
By empowering teachers to directly engage in academic support and pushing students to take ownership of how they learn, our conversations have changed substantially over the last nine years. Instead of “getting students tested,” I might suggest to a family that “we need a deeper understanding of their daughter’s learning needs.” Instead of “giving a student extended time,” we meet as a team and include input from the student and teachers to determine what the student needs to do her best learning. In other words, we customize our interventions to meet students where they are.
Working Through Learning Challenges — Together
We begin with the premise that everyone learns differently, and that the learning process is inherently full of challenges. Consider that many students can actively participate in classroom discussions, but struggle to organize their ideas in writing. This challenge often becomes clear when Winsor history teachers assign their 10th-graders to write a research paper on a topic of their choice each spring.One student recently explained why she found this history assignment so difficult. “I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, and I kept switching my ideas. My teacher gave us a lot of room to work on it. In some ways, it made me feel more scared, but I also felt more confident because my teacher believed I could do it.”
She described that learning to work more independently has been an adjustment. “When I was younger, my teachers would be there every step of the way. As I have gotten older, my teachers do not check in as much because they believe we can do it ourselves,” she said.
For this student, talking through ideas out loud and using Google voice to dictate her paper did the trick. “What helped was figuring out what I needed for myself to study better and to write a better paper. Time doesn’t make a difference; it is figuring out what to do with the time you have.”
In the end, she successfully argued her points on the assignment.
When another 10th-grader was having trouble completing in-class writing assessments, her English teacher consulted with me to identify strategies to help her generate and organize her ideas. The teacher then met with the student to review her performance on previous in-class writing assignments and pinpoint her difficulties. Rather than telling her what to do, her teacher gave her a menu of options to choose from.
The student soon realized that she became paralyzed when processing too many details she wanted to write about, and that she was spending too much time trying to figure out which ones to include. After meeting with her teacher, the student recognized that she needed to narrow her focus. Then, she wrote a new paper based on a specific and limited set of elements from the text.
Her teacher remarked on her progress. “The essay she wrote after we met was nearly twice the length of the previous one and every bit as insightful and well-written. For the following in-class writing exercise, even though the prompt asked her to consider much more material, she was able to write three times as much as she had previously and packed in a great deal of pertinent detail. Her success with the process made her more confident in her writing and in her ability to take control of her own learning in other ways.”
A Multitude of Benefits
The impact of empowering students and teachers in the academic support process permeates Winsor’s culture. Students stop talking about what they cannot do as they realize what they are good at and what they need to be proactive in their learning. Feeling known and supported by teachers, students become independent and confident learners.
Teachers, meanwhile, are more available to collaborate about student support. Rather than referring students to help outside the classroom, teachers are active participants and meet directly with students to identify the challenges and suggest strategies to improve their learning.
In the words of a veteran English teacher:
“Before we would have extra meetings with students or give them extra time for assessments, but in both cases, we were throwing more time at a process that wasn't working.
“These days, a student doesn't simply get additional time; rather, she collaborates with her teacher and with learning support to figure out how to spend that time to maximum effect (given her particular learning style and needs). Similarly, teachers don't simply make additional, ‘extra help’ meetings with students to have the same kind of conversation that wasn't productive in the first place; rather, we partner with the student to think together about her learning process so that she has strategies to do her best work in the context of the course. As a result, the meetings are more productive and, eventually, result in fewer meetings.
“I would also say that, as a faculty, we now share a more informed language that we can use to talk about student support and learning needs, so our collegial conversations are more productive.”
As this teacher makes clear, Winsor is saving time, space, and resources because academic support is woven into the fabric of the school.
The evidence of success is in the data. For the overall student body, the need for extended time has dropped from 9 percent to just above 1 percent of students. In fall 2008, 38 out of 426 students had been evaluated and required individual assistance and accommodations. At least 10 of them received 100 percent extended time for standardized tests, including the college boards. This year, 21 students out of 460 enrolled have evaluations on file and five require extended time accommodations.
I believe our success can be replicated if schools adopt new approaches to academic support that empower students and teachers alike rather than continue to borrow from outdated models for special education. A collaborative, school-wide approach has led to a cultural shift at Winsor and, most important, has improved our students’ overall learning experience.