To support the need for reasonable and appropriate accommodations for learning disabilities, the student requesting services must provide documentation verifying the condition and describing its current functional impact. Documentation serves as a foundation that legitimizes a student's request for appropriate accommodations.

Professionals conducting assessments, rendering diagnoses of learning disabilities, and making recommendations for appropriate accommodations must have comprehensive training and direct experience with an adult learning disabled population. The diagnostician must be an impartial individual who is not a family member of the student.

Learning disability documentation should provide information regarding the onset, longevity, severity, and current impact of symptoms, as well as the specifics describing how it has interfered with educational achievement. Individualized assessments of current cognitive processing and educational achievement are necessary.

Please refer to the attached documentation checklist. It may be used as a guideline to develop a report that enables Cedar Crest College to deliver appropriate accommodations.

For your information, I have also included a Cedar Crest College brochure "Services to Students with Disabilities".

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,

Karen Schoenborn

Disabilities Specialist

Please submit a report on your letterhead which addresses each of the items. You are not limited to these items, but are requested to provide as much information as possible in the following areas:

1. Date of evaluation and specific diagnostic summary, using terminology consistent with the DSM-IV wherever possible. This should include a clinical summary of the diagnostic interview with details about the functional nature and severity of the learning disability.
2. Rationale for this diagnosis which includes a statistical analysis of specific discrepancies if any, identifying how expected performance level was calculated and how actual achievement has been contrasted with expected performance (include all test scores, sub-scores, percentiles and measures of intra-individual patterns and discrepancies between expected performance and actual achievement if any).
3. Summary of the student's history, including information about age of first identification and special services utilized.

4. Description of how the learning disability has functional impact on learning or other major life activities associated with the post-secondary environment (e.g. concentration, processing speed, etc).
5. A description of possible effective accommodations in the post-secondary environment and the rationale for those recommendations (e.g. permission to tape record classes, assistance with note taking, testing in a distraction-free environment). If extended test time is suggested, please specify 1 1/2 times, double time or other.
6. The name and signature of the professional who administered the test battery, and the name of the professional who prepared the report, if different. A brief summary of the professional’s background and expertise in assessing learning disabilities.
7. If not included in your letterhead, license # and state of licensure.