New Look at Learning Disability

Few American colleges have attended to the needs of learning-disabled students as carefully as Boston University, which has used hefty private endowments to offer special services like private tutoring, transcripts of class lectures and private rooms for undistracted test-taking.

In the early 1990s, however, diagnoses of learning disabilities began soaring and even BU had trouble keeping up. The new diagnoses were mostly of loosely defined learning disabilities like attention deficit disorder. To cope, BU limited its special accommodations in 1995 to students who had been diagnosed by a physician or licensed psychologist within the last three years. The school also toughened its policies on waiving math and foreign language requirements for learning-disabled students.

Last month, however, a federal judge ruled that BU’s limits violated federal disability laws. Higher education officials across the country are now concerned that the BU standard will be applied to their institutions. They grumble about the ruling, and rightly so. Federal disability law is based on the antiquated and fuzzily worded Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which defines learning disability as “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written . . . which may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or do mathematical calculations.”

Congress will soon begin revising the act. It should focus not on granting ever more exemptions from academic requirements but on identifying educational interventions that have been proven to help students with specific learning disabilities. The National Institutes of Health could shine some science on recently defined disorders like dysrationalia (resistance to new ideas) and executive function disorder (trouble getting organized), both considered dubious in some quarters. At the same time, the NIH could make it clear that many learning disabilities are genuine medical disorders. There is no doubt that one of them is dyslexia.

For educational guidance, Congress could look to the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, an agency that would be more effective if it was moved from the Education Department to Health and Human Services, where it would be part of a research division and away from the highly politicized lobbying it now faces.

Many premises inherent in federal disability law need to be reexamined. Should a law school student who is unable to read with precision be permitted twice the usual time to take the bar exam and have the help of a personal assistant to record answers? Yes, said a U.S. District Court judge. But being able to read and comprehend seems a reasonable prerequisite for practicing law.

There are plenty of issues that must be revisited in considering changes in disability law. Science is important, but common sense should be the decisive factor.