Secondary schools’ role
in providing and obtaining approval for disability adjustments for
gifted students with disability
Carol Barnes
GLD Australia
Students of high intellectual potential who also have one or moredisabilities or additional educational needs are described as ‘gifted with learning disability’ (GLD).
However the descriptor ‘GLD’ is not restricted to those who have a formally diagnosed specific learning disability such as dyslexia, dysgraphia or dyspraxia. Indeed the term also encompasses gifted students who are otherwise twice-exceptional – for example, gifted students who have special needs such as medical conditions (eg, ADHD), developmental differences (eg, ASD), physical disability, or emotional issues such as anxiety or depression – in short, the student who is intellectually gifted but also has ‘something else going on’ – something which emanates from within the student rather than being environmentally imposed, but which can sometimes interfere with school achievement and/or with social/emotional well-being.
GLD students are sometimes referred to internationally as ‘2e’ (twice-exceptional) or ‘DME’ (dual/multiple exceptionality).
GLD students may be gifted in understanding and identifying complex relationships, generating ideas and using advanced vocabulary. They may have wide general knowledge and be good at difficult, abstract problems. Indeed they may be intellectually astonishing.
At the same time, however, the mechanics involved in writing, reading, spelling,penmanship, rote memorisation, basic computation and other ostensibly simple academic tasks, particularly timed tests, often present seemingly insurmountable difficulties. GLD students frequently have poor time management and organisational abilities, and/or inconsistent attention issues. They may appear vague or preoccupied, and they may sometimes have difficulty following step-by-step instructions.
Being GLD is somewhat akin to being the rope in a tug-of-war: the GLD studentmay be pulled in one direction by their high IQ and their intense desire to learn and to pursue their intellectual interests, but at the same time theymay be pulled in the opposite direction by their disability or special need which mayprevent them from developing their gifts into talents – ie, transforming their high potential into high performance.
Identifying GLD students
GLD students are often hard to identify. The most common and significant feature of a GLD student is uneven or inconsistent academic performance which is unexplained and unpredictable. They may achieve outstandingly high results in academic competitions outside of school, yet be obtaining mediocre results on everyday school assessments and tests. They may excel on multiple choice tests, yet struggle when asked to compose answers on a blank page – or sometimes the other way round. They may similarly excel verbally but perform poorly on pen and paper tasks.
The greatestimpedimentto identifying some GLD students is that their high intelligence maycompensatefor their learning disability, and their disability may mask their intelligence. This means that these GLD studentsmay present at school as having generally‘average’ ability, though some may also display challenging behaviours, usually stemming from frustration and embarrassment about not being able to perform simple school tasks which others seem to find ‘easy’.
In other cases, the giftedness may have been identified but the disability not, or conversely the disability may be patently visible while the giftedness remains hidden. Unless challenging behaviour starts to become an issue, the quiet, behaviourally compliant, polite GLD student may continue to underachieve for years and years at school. No one usually notices a non-squeaky wheel.
The higher the IQ, the later the co-occurring disability tends to be identified. Secondary teachers sometimes express the view that, “Surely if she really had a learning disability, it would have been picked up well before she got into my class!” In reality however many GLD students are not identified as either being gifted or having a disability till around Year 7 or 8 – and indeed some much later than that.
GLD studentsat secondary school
As GLD students progress from primary to secondary school, academic work increases in difficulty and volume, and demands more hours of sustained attention,effort and independent productivity. Students are presented with ever increasing organisational and time-management challenges. They must learn to dealwith a complex schedule, multiple teachers and numerous textbooks which are meant to be kept (but are in fact often lost...) in lockers and schoolbags. When they can’t cope, GLD students often find themselves labelled as ‘lazy’ or ‘careless’ or ‘undeserving’ or even ‘naughty’.
In factthe GLD student may be continually struggling to make sense of having BOTH high intellectual potential AND crippling disability. Continuing failure at school may prompt the student to begin to doubt theirabilities andto become increasingly frustrated and mystified, because the compensation strategies which theyhave unknowingly developed in primary school may cease to work as well, if at all. The high intelligence is no longer able to compensate for the disability, and school performance steadily diminishes, even though the GLD studentactually feels as if they are making considerable effort.
After repeated failures, unidentifiedor unsupported GLD students tend to conclude that they are ‘just stupid’. The result is continuing underachievement, lack of motivation, low self-efficacy and disenchantment with school. The long-term results can be tragic – school refusal, school dropout, social and family problems, chronic under-employment, low socio-economic status and serious mental health concerns.
Responding to GLD students’ needs at school
It is crucial that appropriate support be given to GLD students,especially at school. Most importantly, they must be regularly provided with work which they find challenging, enriching and interestingand which is in keeping with their intellectual abilities. First and foremost, educators need tofeed the gift.
Ordinary remedial programs or traditional in-school separate ‘special education classes’ are usually disastrous for gifted students, who are invariably not assisted by more repetition of facts presented sequentially, and who, despite their disabilities, still require regular opportunities to interact with their intellectual and like-minded peers. Depending on the nature of the disability, the GLD student may benefit from assistive technology and/or specialised remedial teaching or one-on-one out-of-school tutoring which is tailored to the student’s specific disability.
Disability adjustments for GLD students
As well as targeted learning support and remediation, all students who are professionally diagnosed with disability, including gifted students, are protected by federal and state disability discrimination legislation, and may be entitled by law to professionally recommended disability adjustments so that they have an opportunity to demonstrate what they know and what they can do, on the same basis as a student without disability.
Depending on the nature of, and the level of impairment occasioned by, the disability, gifted students may qualify for adjustments such as extra time, rest breaks, laptop computer and/or separate supervision for both in-school activities and tests, and for NAPLAN, ICAS, and Year 12 State exams.
Disability adjustments are also sometimes called ‘accommodations’, ‘disability provisions’ or ‘special provisions’. What they are called is legally irrelevant.
Amongst the numerous passionately contested and continually debated issues relating to the education of GLD students, perhaps the least controversial is the student’s incontestable need for disability adjustments both for classroom work and for tests and exams. Such adjustments are legislatively mandated – they are not a gratuitous favour or a privilege, they are not designed to artificially inflate grades and, for a student with a disability, they do not confer an unfair ‘advantage’.
This article will consider disability adjustments in the context of federal legislation only, though there is similar (but not identical) State legislation as well.
Federal disability discrimination legislation applies to all kinds of education providers: all schools – public, Catholic and independent – as well as universities, TAFEs and testing authorities. It covers enrolment, suspension and expulsion, participation in classroom activities (including extracurricular events such as field trips), access to curriculum and student support services, and assessment (tests and exams).
The legislation requires (in significantly simplified terms) that each education provider
must allow a student with disability to participate in their education on the same basis as a student without disability, by providing reasonable disability adjustments, unless the education provider can show unjustifiable hardship (eg,that the adjustments would be too expensive). The legislation also stipulatesthat the education provider must consult with the student and/or their parents/caregivers with respect to the disability adjustments to be implemented.
Failing to implement professionally recommended adjustments would arguably mean treating the student with disability less favourably than students without their disability, and would require them to comply with unreasonable requirements and conditions with which they are, by reason of the disability, unable to comply, but with which a student without disability would be able to comply. Failing to implement the adjustments would be tantamount to requiring a student without disability to perform their classroom tasks and to write their tests with one arm tied behind their back.
Of course the adjustments only partially compensate for the effects of the student’s disability. They will not completely enable the student to perform as well as if they did not have the disability, and accordingly they will not unilaterally ‘level the playing field’, but they may serve to make it just slightly more level.
Even with the adjustments, the student will have to continue to work very hard to attempt to overcome some of the effects of their disability, as no amount of adjustments will help a student who has not learned their work and has not properly prepared for their exams.
Gifted students with disability sometimes face extra hurdles in this context since some schools and testing authorities erroneously assume, “So if you’re that smart, surely you should be able to cope….”
Accordingly, sometimes schools and testing authorities initially purport to refuse an application for disability adjustments on the grounds that the student is gifted, is already achieving acceptable grades, is ‘not failing’, seems to be improving, has been accelerated,or is ‘too well-behaved’ to ‘really’ have a disability, or on the grounds that others are doing worse but have not been diagnosed with disability or applied for disability adjustments. None of these excuses will stand up on appeal as the legislation contains no exemption for students with disability who are gifted or are otherwise not actually failing.
The adjustments must be made available to the student every day and for every classroom activity and assessment, including tests such as NAPLAN, ICAS, scholarship tests, selective school entrance tests, and Year 12 State exams.
Depending on the nature of the adjustments, the student will need time to learn to use and/or work with them, and should never encounter them for the first time in an activity or assessment which ‘counts’ towards their grades.
It is essential that parents be notified in advance of the dates and times of each and every in-school assessment so that the student will know exactly what to expect on the day with respect to the adjustments, and so that the student will not be reduced to reminding invigilators of previously agreed arrangements or otherwise arguing with adults as to what has already been approved.
Sometimes schools and testing authorities purport to be reluctant to provide professionally recommended disability adjustments in the case of a youngerstudent, on the grounds that the student is still too far away from Year 12 and nothing prior to that really ‘counts’. However, disability adjustments are in fact available for NAPLAN, ICAS, selective schools entrance tests and scholarship tests, all of whose results may be, and regularly are, used to make critical decisions regarding the student’s whole future.
In addition, it is important for the student to have unambiguous precedents extending as far back as possible, because any disability first documented in late high school for purposes of Year 12 State exams may be regarded with suspicion as the attempt of an overly ambitious parent to fabricate a disability and thus to secure an ‘advantage’ for an underachieving child.
With respect to Year 12 State exams, it is wise for schools to ensure that the application is submitted to the testing authority in Term 3 or 4 of Year 11, rather than waiting till Term 1 of Year 12. This will ensure that the teachers invited to provide the requisite reports will have been teaching the student for some time and will be familiar with the student’s disabilities and need for adjustments. If the school waits till the beginning of Year 12, the teachers being asked to supply the reports may have just recently met the student and accordingly may not be qualified to express considered opinions on the student’s level of impairment and need for disability adjustments. Further, even if they do provide supporting reports, their views may be discounted on the grounds that they have not been teaching the student for long enough to have acquired the requisite insight into the student’s individual needs.
When preparing reports for testing authorities, schools should avoid including legislatively irrelevant, gratuitous observations such as ‘tries hard’ or ‘seems to be motivated’ or ‘seems to be well-intentioned’ or ‘is a lovely girl’. Just as the legislation includes no exemption for gifted students or high-achieving students, so it includes no exemption for the seemingly lazy, unmotivated, discouraged or surly.
Sometimes schools are reluctant to implement professionally recommended disability adjustments for in-school activities and tests on the grounds that the adjustments may not be later approved by atesting authority for the student’s Year 12 State exams. Again schools need to keep in mind the importance of setting the longstanding precedent mentioned above, and also the fact that individual schools have their own obligations to students with disability under the legislation, independently of any testing authority.
Each school principal is the ultimate decision maker for in-school test adjustments for all non-State assessments up to and including the HSC trials. Continuing adjustments will allow the student with disability to proceed through secondaryschool better able to show what they have learned and what they can do, and accordingly with a higher sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy, and enhanced academic self-concept. In any event, even if adjustments are ultimately initially denied for the Year 12 State exams, experience shows that, with cogent medical and psychological evidence from well-credentialedprofessionals, they are usually furnished on appeal or after a Human RightsCommission conciliation conference.
Withholding professionally recommended disability adjustments for 12 whole years for fear that that those adjustments may not be granted at the end of the 12th year is unjustifiable.
How can teachers otherwise support GLD students
The disability adjustments discussed above constitutebut one ingredient in the wider ‘solution’ for a GLD student – but they can constitute a very important component. For some GLD students, appropriate adjustments will mean the difference between going on to university - or not.
Since GLD students are a heterogeneous group, each student requires specifically targeted adaptations to their educational program. There is no universal solution appropriate for all GLD students.
If you’ve metone GLDstudent, then you’ve met one.
It is usually amatter of gradually following the ball of wool through to the end, and systematically responding to each strength and weakness. The key to success is often a well-trained and empathetic teacher who understands the needs of GLD students and who is thus able to both feed the giftAND implement adjustments to accommodate the disabilities.
GLD students are frequently not only twice-exceptional but also twice-misunderstood. Some teachers and school administrators who do not grasp the reality of GLD may point on the one hand to the student’s giftedness to ‘prove’ that the student has no real learning disabilities, and on the other hand to the student’s learning disabilities to suggest that the student is not really gifted. This approach can be tragic.
As well as trained, understanding teachers, success for GLD students depends onwell-informed parentswho are skilled at effectively advocating to ensure that theirchild’s needs are being met at school and that theirchild’s medically-supported applications are approved for thedisability adjustments discussed above.