Dawn DeSimone Talks About College

Dawn began by describing some of her experiences with her own LD child and offering advice about the middle to high school transition. She cautioned against pressuring children and urged parents to be aware of their child's strengths and weaknesses. She advised parents to "find your child's passion."

Some interesting facts emerged about high school. First, although the GPA is "counted" starting with 9th grade, colleges look for improvement over the four years understanding that freshman year can be a difficult transition. Also, students may participate in their IEPs once they become 14 years old. By the time students enter high school they should be aware of their learning disabilities, what accommodations they need, and how to advocate for themselves.

Dawn advised that students should do some part-time work by the time they become sophomores. By the Junior year, Dawn meets with parents and students to devise post-secondary strategies, and during the Senior year, she makes recommendations and works with individual students to submit applications. She told parents that LD students do not fulfill a minority student quota and therefore must meet a college's minimum requirement for SAT scores, class rank and GPA to be considered for admission.

Dawn urged parents to be aware of the accommodations a college offers prior to submitting an application although accommodations in college are generally limited to extended time, breaks, and possibly use of a computer. The student still has to meet the requirements of the course. She handed out an interesting comparison of the differences in disability services between high school and college.

There were many questions about the SAT, ACT and accommodations for these tests. Surprisingly, test accommodations may not always be best for the student. For example, a student with attention deficit might not be able to sit for six hours given a 50% extended test time. It may be better to request 100% extended time which permits testing over two days. Also, Dawn surprised many parents by stating that it is the educational evaluation, not the IEP, that determines whether or not a student may receive accommodations. Only a specific statement in the educational evaluation of the services needed is considered. Regarding testing, since Craig is a special test site, if no evaluation has been done, a student may not test at Craig.

Dawn remarked that Craig students tend to do better on the ACT which is more content based than the SAT. Also strategies are important. A wrong answer loses points on the SAT while there is no penalty on the ACT. Dawn told parents that only one score is given on the ACT so if a student does well in one subject, it may bring the score up. It therefore behooves a student to wait until senior year to take the ACT to accumulate the most subject area knowledge.

Dawn closed by describing the various post-secondary options -- 4-year, 2-year, certificate, life skills and vocational training programs.