At some point the educational system needs to say, "If you can't do the work, you don't belong here." If a college history class requires written term papers, I don't think that requirement should be relaxed for anyone. Grades on college transcripts should be comparable.
I think it's tough to really understand this type of "hidden" disability unless you've personally experienced it yourself or through knowing someone who has struggled with it. The important nugget to take away from this, for folks who aren't parenting a child with DOWD or who aren't familiar with it, is that having DOWD doesn't mean the child/person doesn't have meaningful insightful knowledgable things to say - I don't have time to look up the list at the moment, but there are quite a few very famous, brilliant entrepreneurs/inventors/etc living now and in past history who most either have or most likely had DOWD. My ds' testing is like looking from a distance at a high high ridgeline that all of a sudden has a huge dip into one very narrow valley and then it's back up to the very high ridgeline again. If you know him from talking to him, from listening to his ideas, there's no question he's an EG/PG kid. If you only knew him through his ability to express himself through written expression, you'd never have a chance to hear his amazing insight and you'd probably walk away thinking he's average (or lower) intelligence.
Accommodations for DOWD don't make grades across coursework "not comparable" - accommodations allow people with disabilities to show their knowledge without being limited by the disability. Using a keyboard or extended time for written expression is the "glasses" or "wheelchair" that allow a person with DOWD to show their knowledge.
If a student needs more time than others to do the work, he should consider taking fewer classes.
I think most of us here have at one time or another lamented as we've seen our children sit bored in a classroom where they didn't have the intellectual stimulation that fuels their high-ability brain and inspires them to learn. Imagine being a PG kid (or even an average IQ kid) and being told you should limit the number of course you take this semester because you don't write as quickly as a typical student. Or imagine being put into a non-gifted or non-honors course because you're written expression takes time yet your brain is flying on warp speed.
The accommodations that aculady listed are all *very* typical and widely recognized accommodations for people with DOWD.
polarbear
