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Wednesday, December 2, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
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mention his disability or ask for extra time on tests because he didn't like to use it as an excuse. It makes him feel too demanding, he said.
"It's easier for others to say that I have a problem than for me to say I have."
He said he had considered taking tests orally, but didn't.
"When I think back, maybe I should've taken tests orally. I didn't
use the Recordings for the Blind until my sophomore biology class because I was afraid I would lose my reading skills," Miller said.
He said that if he could take a test in an hour like other students, even though he needed an hour and a half to complete the test, that he knew the material better.
"Most of the time, if I got an 89 percent, I should have had a 100 percent. It's because of dumb mistakes under pressure."
He said he usually went to his teachers at the beginning of the semester and asked if they received
Miller said that teachers had been cooperative giving extra time on tests when they found out he had a learning disability, but they don't understand the problem.
the letter.
"It's hard to get some teachers to realize that I have to decipher the question and then write out the answer," he said.
Other times, he doesn't talk to his teachers about his disability because he doesn't want them to assume from him that he will get a lower grade.
high school, but the going is tougher at KU, he said.
Teachers might have let him by in
"Up here, they didn't cut me any slack, but they helped," he said.
He realizes he is among a select group of determined students who have learning disabilities and are in college.
"If they get to this level, they've coped with it," he said.
Strategies for disabled students vary
By IULIE McMAHON
Staff writer
Imagine trying to study for a test without being able to read the textbook, or trying to write an essay using symbols that don't make sense.
For some college students, reading and writing are a daily struggle that most take for granted. They may have trouble reading or writing their thoughts down on paper, but it's not because they are unintelligent.
It's because of a learning disability.
Some of those students choose to push through college on their own, but others need help to compensate for their disability. The University of Kansas has services for these students, but it used to have more.
Project Access was the name of a federally financed research project at KU that investigated learning strategies for some types of learning disabilities. Its staff worked with students and faculty studying and other skills. The grant expired after three years in December 1983. KU did not renew it.
Tom Skritic, associate professor of special education, was the director of the project. He said that Donald Deshier, director of the KU Institute for Research of Learning Disabilities, had been studying learning strategies for high school students. Skritic and Deshier decided that those strategies should be modified for college students.
The institute, which is part of the School of Education, is one of the few research institutes in the country
that explores strategies for helping college-age students with learning disabilities. The institute is not limited to college students but also researches strategies to help adolescents and adults, said Keith Lenz, a research associate at the institute.
Lenz said the institute had trained approximately 25,000 public school teachers in the United States and had a large number of teachers set up training projects for teachers.
Deshier and Skrtic received a grant for Project Access that they hoped would make the project permanent at KU. Skrtic said the original plan was to integrate the services into other parts of KU so that when the three years ended, the program could continue.
But after the project was discontinued, the Counseling Center took over the testing of some students for learning disabilities, and the Student Assistance Center took over services for students.
Lenz said it was ironic that a leading center of learning disability research didn't have an independent office with services available.
Skrtic said that although the Student Assistance Center did a good job, it did not have the resources required to examine what the project had started.
"The Student Assistance Center does a whole range of things, but with learning disabilities, it is a very complex set of problems. Each student that walks in is different," he said. "They are just not set up to do
this."
The center offers recorded textbooks and general counseling to students with learning disabilities. The center also acts as a bridge between the student and professor if the student wants the professor to be informed. The center asks the professor to make whatever accommodation he or she needs, some students need extended time on tests to read and answer questions.
Community colleges are the leaders in higher education for students with learning disabilities, Lenz said. They are better because they are able to learn at home and because they are set up for the needs of a variety of students.
Some universities have more specialized programs designed specifically for students with learning disabilities
One of those is the University of Colorado-Boulder, which is one of KU's peer institutions and a fellow Big Eight university. It has an Office of Students with Learning Disabilities and a Department of Disabled Students. A three-person staff works with 80 to 100 students with learning disabilities.
The University of Minnesota-Minneapolis has two learning disability specialists in the Office for Students with Disabilities who work with 250 students. They offer learning disability support groups and tutoring for students with disabilities in addition to the services KU has.
Kansas State University's program is much like KU's. It has an
office called Services for Students with Limitations that doesn't have staff members who deal only with students with learning disabilities. But Gretchen Holder, the coordinator of the consultant to suggest recommendations for making an independent learning disability unit.
Lorraine Michel, assistant director of KU's Student Assistance Center, said KU did not have an office, a resource room, tutors or study skills sessions just for students with learning disabilities because those services are desired by all students, not just students with learning disabilities.
But Michel said this was not a disadvantage because most students with learning disabilities already learned strategies to cope with their disabilities while in high school.
She said that at the college level, students have to deal more with the content of the subject and less with coping strategies. The services and tutors available at KU serve this purpose.
Michel said that most students don't want a special program because they want to be more indebted. They are mainstreamed with other students.
"We encourage the development of independence. That's not to say that we're not here to help and create ideas and brainstorm, but there has to come a point where they come to us with the ideas," Michel said.
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