Margaret: My high school student is allowed extra time for test but a bigger issue is the amount of homework given and the time it takes her to complete . I am told by the school that they can not accommodate homework and decrease the load. Their response is that she will just have to get lower grades. So she either has to turn something in incomplete and not understand the concepts or chase her tail trying to complete several days worth of homework and hope it isn’t marked off for being late. She has inattentive add and the anxiety that goes along with it. She also suffers from some medical issues that cause chronic fatigue. She needs to sleep!! Not stay up late doing homework.
Yea schools kind of have to follow Section 504 but sometimes they’ll try to that giving less homework would change the curriculum (It really doesn’t), but if the try to refuse ask for a physical documentation about the reasons why and send that to like a IEP advocate or something like that.
But school just don’t want to do it because they don’t actually care about mental health. now you can say that there is mental health presentations but that’s kind of a band aid to make it look like its all good. A well known websites for ADHD is Chadd and one of the accommodations is less homework. Extra time homework accommodation just makes a huge build up on work. “My school makes me ask for extra time before the assignment is due. And which is dumb when I have ADHD and forget to ask for more time.
All 3 of my sons have either ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, behavior disorder & all 3 were able to get accommodations for reduced work load on homework. IE if math was 30 problems they only did every other one to get the concepts etc. If can be done. In our state there is a CORE curriculum & that is what we got. it is not hard to have added to the IEP if you ask & every teacher should now how to do this. If my children did not have that I think they would still be doing homework now 10 years after graduation.
Some IEPs have (1) homework modifications, e.g. where the harder questions are not assigned (sounds like your daughter might not need these), and/or (2) homework accommodations, e.g., “student is to do every other problem,” “parent makes notation after 30 minutes or when student is fatigued,” etc. When my child faced this, I found it helpful to circle the problems I wanted him to do, explaining that I was working on getting a long-term solution but in the meantime I was taking responsibility for my decision to restrict how much homework he was doing. I made the notation on the homework each time, and/or sent an email. At the same time, I called an IEP meeting, brought child’s therapist to meeting, letter from pediatrician and homework log. Good luck to you.
There is no legal reason that I am aware of that they cannot reduce classwork & homework. Ask the special ed director in writing for the rule that says they cannot do this. Request an IEP meeting to discuss this situation. Your state special ed parent training & information center can assist you. http://www.parentcenterhub.org/find-your-center