Eligibility for Students with Learning Disabilities
- Diagnosis
Certain criteria must be met in order for a student to receive appropriate accommodations for a learning disability. Students are expected to self-identify and present appropriate documentation to the Disability Resource Center. Documentation should include a written report of a thorough psycho-educational battery of tests administered by a licensed psychologist. The evaluation should be within three years of admission to the University. The following guidelines indicate what needs to be included for determination of eligibility for services.
A comprehensive diagnostic report that includes the following domains:
- DSM IV Code.Sufficient documentation for the identification of a learning disability. Clarification: a specific learning disability must be stated within the documentation submitted. The student should exhibit average intellectual ability with an academic deficit and a correlated cognitive or information processing deficit. To be considered a deficit, a score or process must be depressed at least one standard deviation. The cognitive deficit should represent a logical basis for the academic deficit. The report should include documentation of both academic deficits and processing deficits.
- Assessment Instruments. Should have age appropriate norms for high school seniors, college freshmen, or older non-traditional students. All standardized measures need to be represented by standard scores and percentile ranks based on published norms. Should scores based on specialized norms are used, please provide scores based on general population norms if available in the manual.
- Aptitude. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - III (WAIS-III) with subtest scores (preferred instrument), The Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III): General Intellectual Ability (Standard or Extended), the Stanford Binet IV, Kaufman Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT), or the Differential Ability Scales (DAS).
- Achievement. Current levels of functioning in reading (decoding, comprehension and rate), mathematics (calculation, reasoning and fluency), and written language (spelling and mechanics) are required. Acceptable instruments include: WJ III: Test of Achievement; Nelson Denny Reading Test; Stanford Test of Academic Skills (TASK); Stanford Diagnostic Mathematics Test and others.
- Information Processing. Assessment of the following areas of information processing are required: attention, oral language, phonological/orthographic processing, fluency/automaticity, memory/learning, executive functions, visual perceptual, visual spatial, and visual motor. Acceptable instruments include subtests from the WAIS-III (if not used to determine intellectual ability) and WJ III: Tests of Cognitive Abilities and others.
- Recommendations. For classroom and testing accommodations
- Diagnosed Condition Satisfies Definition of a Disability
- Behavior must be consistent with the University of Georgia Conduct Code