student with accommodations and lack of progress

Submitted by Irene Paino on Wed, 06/19/2013 - 13:10
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I've heard the term, "Ability to Benefit."   What exactly does that mean, and if it applies to a student who has not made progress for an extended period of time (with accommodations), what options are available for that student?   What are the institution's responsibilities?

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Right now, students who don’t have either a high school diploma or a GED are allowed to take a general skills test for admission. If they score high enough, they are deemed to have the “ability to benefit” from college level work, and are eligible for admission and financial aid. For reasons of its own, the Federal government is not only removing the eligibility for financial aid, but even making entire institutions ineligible for financial aid if they admit any ABT students, even those who are paying their own way.

 

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The "ability to benefit" option has been seen as a double-edged sword.  While it has provided access to postsecondary education for adult education students and others who would otherwise have been denied access, it had also increased the number of adults who had been saddled with student loan debt and exhausted their federal Title IV aid, including Pell Grants without earning a marketable credential. However, with the emergence of promising programs that are improving college completions and the elimination of the ability to benefit option severely hurt students' ability to pay for their education programs when dually enrolled in community or technical college programs while earning their high school equivalency credential.  For more information on ability to benefit in respect to adult education, see this document from CLASP Eliminating “Ability to Benefit” Student Aid Options Closes Door to College Credentials for Thousands and Undermines Innovation.

 

Irene,

I just read your original post again and realized what you are really asking about is what to do about learners who after spending a significant amout of time in your program either do not make an educational gain or "yo-yo" gaining and then losing what they had previously gained and I think my response was really in response to cspriza's response and not your intended question.  I was previously the associate director for the state of Kansas and was previously was asked this question often, I am going to share from Kansas' adult education policy manual. The entire manual and more about serving learners with disabilities is posted on the website at the following location, but I have excerpted the most relevant information to address your question.  The bottom line is that there does come a time when it is the right thing to do to counsel a student into other community services that may be a better fit for their needs. Hope this information is more hopeful than my previous response.

"Similarly, a learner with limited ability must demonstrate progress toward an "appropriate" goal.  If the learner cannot or does not demonstrate progress, the program should have a record of the learner’s identified goal(s), plan for achieving the goal(s), monitoring of progress toward goal(s), etc.  If these elements are in place, and a learner is not making measurable progress toward an appropriate educational goal, then the adult education program is obviously not the appropriate placement (program) for the learner. Even if the learner "is happy in our program," "likes to attend our program," "is developing more appropriate social skills," etc., these are not measurable education/workplace preparation goals, and, while they may be appropriate goals for some programs, they are not (absent from any other measurable education/workforce readiness progress) sufficient reasons for programs to continue to provide services to an individual.

Following these procedures does not mean that programs have to generate excessive additional paperwork.  Most programs already have a process for identifying appropriate goals, log of learner attendance/efforts, a learning plan which includes assignments, teacher's comments, learner's reviews of his/her progress, records of teacher/learner joint reviews of progress, etc. Of course, learner handbooks and other orientation materials should state very clearly the expectations of the program--that all learners will identify and work toward an appropriate education/workforce readiness goal and that learners will demonstrate ongoing measurable progress.

For special needs learners—to ensure programs are not being discriminatory—there would not be the same expectation or timeframe, etc., as for learners who did not have special needs.  For example, if a learner had a mobility problem and had to depend on public transportation, he/she may not be able to attend the program during inclement weather, so an attendance policy would have to allow for these special circumstances.  A learner who has a developmental disability (e.g. mental retardation, Down's syndrome, autism) may be able to document a learning gain of five points on the CASAS only after 160 or more hours of instruction instead of the more typical 70-100 hours of instruction. However, if the learner is showing no learning gains--even on teacher-constructed tests, end-of-chapter tests, etc., and different methods have been tried and proven unsuccessful, then the learner (and perhaps an advocate/aide/parent) needs to be informed that unless measurable progress toward a goal is made by a defined future date, then the learner will no longer be a participant in the program because the program is not an appropriate placement for this learner.

When this process is followed, learners have been given due process, programs have not been discriminatory, and the program has followed a consistent process that documents that concerted efforts were made to help the learner meet his/her education/workplace readiness goal(s). (pages 83-84)"

 

 

From Kansas Board of Regents, (2013) Adult Education, Kansas Adult Education Policy Manual, Retrieved from: http://kansasregents.org/resources/PDF/2169-FY2013KansasAEPolicyManual.pdf

Michelle and all,

Post-secondary institutions are supposed to have ability to benefit policy. Some, like Kansas, are formal and specific. Some are not. It might be interesting to know if our list serve members who are associated with post-secondary institutions have access to their institution’s ability to benefit policy and procedures and would like to share them.

The changes in financial aid policy was a horrible blow to the process of re-training adults who had depended on the ATB policy to access post-secondary education.  I believe an additional reason for the ATB removal might have been some connection to loopholes in immigration policy. Either way, the loss of that policy was significant.

Robin and Irene,

I wanted to clarify that the second post I made was not in response to postsecondary institutions and ATB; it was in response to how we advised adult education programs in handling learners in their programs who were not making progress and I believe that is what Irene's original question was about and I think I got a little sidetracked into the ATB and postsecondary policy.  Irene, let me know if I am on track with responding your question and if my second response helps.