I think it was unfair to create a situation where some students are able to ask the professor questions during the exam and other students aren’t just based on location, and that the cellphone thing was intended to level the playing field. It’s probably not a good idea for professors to make offers like that unless they’re part of a formal accommodation plan since it sounds like it might get them in trouble if the offer ends up not panning out.
It’s hard to really tell what happened, but the article makes it sound as if the building that she was in was very far from where the other students were taking the exam. (That’s another thing that didn’t really sit right; they couldn’t find one empty room in the same building? I know colleges can be overcrowded but that’s awful.)
If the offer of allowing Burbella to call the professor to ask questions was intended to satisfy an accommodation that’s in her 504 plan, providing the accommodation (whether thru use of a cell phone or some other means) is a legal requirement.
If other students were permitted to ask the professor questions, disabled students shouldn’t have been denied equal access. One disabled student WAS granted permission to test in the same building as the rest of the class, but Burbella’s request to be in the same buiding so she, too, could have face to face contact with the professor was denied. That’s not equal access. It was summertime. There wasn’t one empty room to be had in the entire building? I find that hard to believe.
If other students weren’t required to walk across campus every time they had a question, a disabled student shouldn’t have been required to do so. Use of a cell phone during a timed exam is a reasonable accommodation; walking across campus isn’t. “Extended time” isn’t unlimited time. If a counselor was proctoring the test, s/he could hardly leave the room to go get the professor. Even if s/he could, a disabled student shouldn’t have to wait for the counselor to walk across campus, ask the question, and walk back. Allowing cell phone calls may be considered equal access, but it’s only equal if you actually answer the phone.
I’m amazed anyone would be able to ask a prof a question during an exam. We were never allowed to ask questions during any exam I took in nursing school.
I think that’s a little different. I don’t think anyone is saying that non-disabled people should be entitled to disability accommodations; I don’t think anyone would say that a student who didn’t have a disability is being discriminated against because she can’t park in the handicapped spots, for example.
The issue is that, as far as I can tell, the students in the room with the professor could ask questions and the students who were not in the room couldn’t. Other posters have noted that other schools have gotten around this problem by not allowing any student to ask questions of the professor, but if that’s not what this school did then it’s unfair to impose someone a special disadvantage (not having the same access to prof as everyone else) just because of their accommodation.
Our instructors explained that when one student raises their hand and asks a question, all the students in the room are entitled to the answer. They did not want to constantly interrupt the testing session, so no questions were allowed.
My comments are in no way suggesting that the student has no case in this particular instance.
It would be highly unlikely that anyone would have failed out of our program on the strength of one exam, though. Our professors worked hard to help everyone there succeed. If someone failed out of that program, it was because of a preponderance of evidence that the student clearly couldn’t cut it.
It is unfortunate that the professor didn’t answer the phone, but we have heard only one side of this story and there are many reasons why the phone might not have been answered which have nothing to do with discrimination. Since the offer was made, it certainly doesn’t appear to have been the intent of anyone to discriminate.
The student could have requested that the counselor find a way to contact the prof during the exam when the phone was not answered, but there is no statement that the student requested such assistance.
We are also not told when this incident occurred. This student was getting extended time on a final exam, which was probably already pretty long to begin with. What happens if the student has a question after the other students have already been required to turn in their papers? Does the student have a right to information from the professor at this point, when the other students are not going to get it?
I’m not sure whether she has a leg to stand on, but I find some of the comments I’ve read on here to be disgusting. Insinuating that someone with anxiety or depression cannot make a good nurse is a hell of an assumption to make-especially when you don’t know the student. Anxiety manifests in different ways-maybe hers is worse during tests. Being far away from the professor, assuming that the rest of the students had the ability to ask questions, does out her at a disadvantage. We don’t know the entire story, but we also don’t know her.
We know that her anxiety is so poorly controlled that she fell apart when a small difficulty arose. We know that she has been consistently failing her class, even when she took the exam in the room the first time around and did have the opportunity to ask the prof questions. We know that she lacks the coping/problem solving skills to do a simple and obvious thing like asking the counselor to contact the professor when the phone plan wasn’t working. And we also know that her response to a small adversity is to file a lawsuit.
If she felt so strongly that she was discriminated against and that she could have passed the test if she had been given fair circumstances, then wouldn’t it have been far more productive to meet with the dean and the person in charge of her accommodations, explain her grievance, and request that she be allowed to take another final exam with access to the professor? No, she files a lawsuit. How much money is she asking for?
Just a small thing: college students don’t have 504 plans. The standard for accommodations at the college level are a bit lower than in public high school, and apparently this area of law is being worked out in the courts.
A student accommodation cannot pose undue financial or administrative burden on the school and cannot substantially change the academic program. Often, disabilities offices on campus are “guard dogs of the curriculum” rather than genuinely supportive. The desire to avoid liability can drive some types of support.
I think this student has a good case and I predict it will mean many schools will be careful about having a professor or teaching assistant available to most of the class when a student with a disability is in a separate room without access to that person.
^^I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call the disabilities office a guard dog for the curriculum, but the standard is definitely different from k-12. The college office should be fighting for the student to have access, and provide reasonable accommodations that ensure access, but success is up to the student. Disabilities offices should advocate for their students, but when push comes to shove, they really don’t have the expertise to determine that major X really doesn’t need skill Y. That is a decision made by the faculty in a program.
The term “guard dog of the curriculum” is not mine. And hearing the term for the first time really helped me, the parent of a kid with disabilities, understand the process we were engaged in. It is true, as I wrote above, that an accommodation cannot change an academic program in any way (or pose undue financial or administrative burden). In my experience, even at the most helpful and supportive colleges, one aspect of the disability office’s job is to filter out requests for accommodations that don’t meet these standards. And much is still up to the discretion of professors, particularly, for example, regarding absences. Lawsuits continue to clarify policies at the post-secondary level.
We have learned that institutional behavior is not motivated by kindness, even when actions appear to be kind, even at a supportive school staffed by very nice, concerned people. If, say, reduced courseload is offered, with resulting extra time on campus, or any other accommodation, chances are there is some benefit to the school as well as the student. It may just be keeping the graduation rate intact, or a financial motive, or even just avoiding legal liability. It is good to know this, and makes perfect sense to me. Once we realized this, it really helped us understand how to best work with colleges to benefit both our kid and the school.
Well, yes, I’d have to agree with that. There are many times when my director steps in on behalf of a student, but there are also times when she has to tell students/parents that an accommodation is not reasonable, even if it’s one the student had in high school. And yes, attendance is a tricky one.
Nobody is saying that someone who can’t hack nursing should be a nurse. So the college would be within its rights to deny some requested accommodation in the practical part of the nursing curriculum. For example, a college ought to deny a request of extra time when doing patient care, or a separate room for patient care instead of the usual room – a nurse’s job is to get the job done in the time allotted, in the place where the patients are, and if she can’t do that, she can’t be a nurse and she should fail her the practical component of her training.
For the practical component, the only kind of accommodations offered should be accommodations that would normally be available to working nurses. I can’t think of any disability accommodations that would be appropriate, but probably there are some accommodations I’m not thinking of. Maybe some kind of mobility aid?
But a classroom nursing course is different. A student should pass if they can show they know the material. It’s not part of a nurse’s job to take chemistry exams; that’s just a step on the way to becoming a nurse. And she should be able to take that step if she learns the chemistry. Reasonable accommodations for disabilities should be fine. Time enough to weed out the students who can’t hack the nursing job, once the students are doing their practical part of their learning.
Is it just in nursing programs that students can ask questions during exams, or, as one commenter noted, challenge the professor for including material not covered in the course? I’ve never heard of this! After years of complaints about poorly written test questions from my kid, the idea that one could ask questions about unstated assumptions or anything else for that matter has me practically giddy. However, I won’t tell him about this in case it turns out to not to be a prevalent practice.
Cardinal, do you want to be given chemo by a nurse who needs extra time and a quiet room to translate your weight in lbs into kilos? Do you want your toddler’s triage to be supervised by a nurse who needs extra time- and the ability to ask clarifying questions of a supervisor- when deciding if the concentration of oxygen to be administered will be helpful or toxic?
Chemistry is NOT a step on the way to becoming a nurse. It forms the basis of thousands of decisions and clinical judgements that a nurse will make. Not every nursing situation requires heavy duty chemistry- school nursing, for example, which is more public health/nutrition/referral than hands on care.
But will this student get a degree with an asterisk to say “don’t employ her in situations which require the ability to multiply/divide/do quick calculations of basic chemical formulae and concepts”???
Exactly. If she gets to practical and she needs extra time there-that doesn’t fly. But exams are completely different than the actual conditions and situations you run into in the day-to-day activities of a nurse
I don’t care whether the nurse got extra time on her chemistry exam. All I care about is whether she can calculate pounds to kilos, or triage a toddler, in practice, in the hospital or clinic or wherever she is practicing. And that is going to be discovered not in an exam, but during the nurse’s clinical training. If she is not fast enough in actual situations, then she is not good enough. If she becomes too anxious in actual clinical situations, she is not good enough. And that is where the winnowing out for speed and anxiety should take place.
A potential nurse who did wonderfully on the classroom exams, but who can’t, in practice, triage a toddler or calculate the right weight using the tools available to practicing nurses in the normal time for such tasks, should not become a nurse. A potential nurse who takes extra time in classroom exams, but in practice is able to handle nursing situations in the normal time for such tasks, is fine to become a nurse, and I would have no hesitation having her nurse me-- because she has shown that she can do it.
For some reason you seem to be assuming that performance on exams is the same as performance in clinical practice. It’s not. They are not the same skills. Knowledge should be evaluated in classroom exams, and practical skills should be evaluated in clinical training.