Introduction
When I give presentations or talk to families or professionals about college accommodations, I find people are often surprised to hear that colleges don’t commonly approve assignment deadline extensions for students with learning disabilities or ADHD. (Learn more about what they do and don’t approve.)
Of course, there are certainly exceptions to this, and each student’s situation will be different even at the same college. I always encourage students to request whatever they think they need; there is always a possibility that they will get it.
However, I think it’s important for families and high school professionals who work with these students to be aware of the fact that this is an accommodation that isn’t frequently granted. I say this not to discourage people (again, I always think students should request this when they go to college), but because I believe that the more information everyone has about the college environment, the better planning can be for students’ transition there.
It may be hard to understand why students who often have problems with time management, task initiation, and other elements of executive functioning would not be granted such an accommodation. I asked my friend and colleague Bonni Alpert, EdD, Disability and Educational Consultant in Higher Education, to explain it from position and experience as someone who served as a disability services director for many years. Her response follows. (Read a professor’s discussion of why this accommodation presents so many challenges on Slate.)
Differences in Goals of High School Accommodations and College Accommodations
It seems to me that we (Disability Service, or DS, providers in post-secondary institutions) have been seeing more requests for extensions on assignments in recent years. And I can’t help but wonder if one reason for this comes from the significant increase of this accommodation in the K-12 education system.
There is, however, an important distinction between the laws and the purpose of accommodations in K-12 and those in higher education. The K-12 accommodation system is designed to ensure that students transition successfully through the system, whereas higher education facilitates accommodations to ensure “equal access.”
Therefore, with respect to assignment deadlines, we ask questions about the accommodation and how it ensures students’ access. (We consider this for any accommodation students request). We might ask:
- What do all other students have access to that this student wouldn’t without being given more time?
- What is the academic barrier that is keeping the student from completing the work by the deadline?
In other words, the first step in determining the appropriateness of an accommodation is to look at how the requested accommodation is linked to the limitations/barriers imposed by the student’s disability. If there is no nexus/connection between the limitation and the requested accommodation, then there is no reason to believe that the accommodation is appropriate.
Why Students Who Are Approved for Extended Time for Tests May Not Get It for Out-of-Class Assignments
We give extended time on in-class tests because the impacts/limitations of the student’s disability would preclude the opportunity for the student to produce the same level and amount of response as his/her classmates in a given amount of time. All students have a limited time to produce their answers, and this student’s disability means that additional time will be needed. Since there is no additional time available in a two-hour exam period, this student needs to be formally granted an extended time limit to have equal access.
This scenario is not relevant when we are talking about assignments. For instance, when a professor gives their class 7 days to complete an assignment, the professor doesn’t expect students to spend the full seven days working on that assignment. Rather, it is expected that all students manage their time as necessary to ensure that they can complete the assignment when it’s due.
In this situation, students are not given a limited amount of time to do the work, so there is no need to extend those limits for the student with a disability. It is, in other words, an issue of time-management, not a disability-related access issue.
There are some disabilities that may have a significant impact on a student’s executive functioning skills, but meeting deadlines is still considered a reasonable expectation in most situations post-high school. This is why it is so important for teachers and parents/guardians to make sure students learn these skills before they get to college, where extensions may not be a viable option.
In the disability services field, we make decisions on a case-by-case basis and don’t typically make blanket rules. That said, many colleges don’t often approve extensions even though we know some students have personal challenges (i.e., poor time management) and we are sympathetic and want to help them.
Why Deadline Extensions Can Be Ineffective When They Are Approved
The problem with extensions is that they don’t address the issue of time management or procrastination. If a student whose issue is procrastination gets an extra day to submit an assignment, will they start when they should, or just procrastinate for an additional day? If a student had days to complete something, what does an additional 24 hours do if they will procrastinate until the last minute, which has now just been extended.
Also, in my experience, when students are granted extensions, they often have trouble meeting even the next deadline. And if they get an extra week to do something, then another paper is due after that, and work can pile up, which increases their stress.
In other words, does the extra day actually remove a genuine barrier or just delay the on-going challenge that will exist no matter the deadline? What if we asked the professor to give all students eight days instead of seven? Would that address the issue for the student or would we still be asking for eight days plus an additional 24 hours?
An accommodation should remove a genuine barrier, not serve to delay (due to procrastination, poor time-management, anxiety, an overwhelming academic and work schedule, etc.) the completion of assigned work. In most cases, these problems can be resolved by having the student adjust their schedule to meet their disability and learning needs.
Situations Where Deadline Extensions May Be Approved
This case-by-case analysis explains why there will always be some instances where certain students will get an extension. In some situations, for instance, if the reason that the student didn’t have the extra time to devote to the assignment during the two-day time span is because the student had a flare-up of disability-related symptoms that made it impossible to focus on school work, then this may be one of those times when it is appropriate and necessary to ask for a disability-related extension on an assignment. (This typically applies to students with psychological or medical disabilities that have brief, severe flare-ups.) But even these students don’t typically get a “blanket” accommodation where every time a paper is due, they may get a few extra days.
In addition, if the professor makes exceptions for other students’ extenuating circumstances (a hospitalization, the death of a parent, an away sports event, etc.), they will be hard-pressed not to offer the same option for a student with the kind of legitimate disability-related need mentioned above. Most professors/departments have policies that speak to these types of circumstances.
