CLASS Program - Documentation of a Disability
ADD/ADHD and/or Psychiatric Verification Form (PDF)
Verification for Students with PDD/Autism/Asperger (PDF)
Questionnaire for Students with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDF)
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, individuals with disabilities are guaranteed certain protections and rights to equal access to programs and services. Students wishing to take advantage of these rights must present documentation demonstrating that they have a relevant disability and that it substantially limits their opportunity to learn.
The Center for Learning and Adaptive Student Services (CLASS) at Augsburg College provides academic support and accommodations to students with specific cognitive and psychological disabilities. The aim of these services is to ensure that students with disabilities have full access to the educational opportunities the college offers. Our success in fulfilling that aim depends, in part, on having complete and accurate information about each student’s academic potential and current level of performance. The documentation we require when students register for services with CLASS is our primary source for that information.
This webpage is intended to help you understand the kinds of information we need and why we need it. It should also help you determine whether the documentation you have will satisfy those criteria. It will also help you make sure that any new documentation you obtain will meet the requirements.
Please note, however, that these descriptions are meant to serve as general guidelines, rather than complete specifications. Final decisions about the adequacy of documentation can only be made after your materials have been reviewed by the CLASS staff. If you would like more detailed information on the kinds of documentation expected at the post-secondary level, you should consult similar guidelines published by such national organizations as the Association for Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD), the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the ACT.
Please read this information carefully. If you have questions about the documentation of your disability, or about the process of establishing eligibility for CLASS, please call the CLASS office at (612) 330-1053.
General Requirements for Documentation of Disabilities
The guidelines for documentation of disabilities address six important areas:
1. Qualifications of the Evaluator
Professionals conducting assessments, rendering diagnostic opinions and making recommendations for accommodations must be qualified to do so. They should be trained and licensed or certified in one of the professions that are accepted as competent and qualified to conduct these kinds of assessments. This includes clinical or school psychologists, neuropsychologists, and educators and physicians with special training and expertise in these areas. Additionally, the conducting of assessments, rendering of diagnostic opinions and the provision of recommendations for accommodations are to be done by a Qualified Professional not related to the student.
Diagnostic reports must:
- be typed on the evaluator’s letterhead, and signed by that professional.
- contain evaluator’s name, title, professional credentials, licensure area and license number.
- include date(s) of testing and date of the written report.
- provide a full listing of tests and subtests administered.
- include a full listing of test results, with standard scores and percentile ranks.
3. Recency of the Documentation
The provision of all reasonable accommodations is based on the current impact of the diagnosed disability on a student’s academic performance. It is important that the information in the report be reflective of the student’s current cognitive and academic functioning. Ordinarily, this means that the observations and testing should not be more than three years old, but this should be viewed as a rough guide. In some cases, older testing may be deemed valid, while in others testing that is less than three years old may be judged out of date if other indications suggest that it no longer reflects the student’s current level of functioning.
4. Comprehensiveness of Documentation.
A comprehensive psycho-educational or neuropsychological report should contain:
- A comprehensive developmental, educational and clinical history.
- A broad assessment of cognitive function, using such instruments as the WAIS-III, Differential Abilities Scales (DAS), or Woodcock-Johnson-III Tests of Cognitive Ability.
- A broad assessment of academic skills and achievement, using a well-established battery, such as the Woodcock-Johnson-III Tests of Achievement or the WIAT-II.
5. Diagnostic Conclusions and Reasoning.
It is important that the specific diagnostic conclusions be stated in the report. These conclusions should include a summary of the evidence and the reasoning used to arrive at that diagnosis. This should include consideration of alternative explanations of the symptoms and the reasons for ruling out alternative and concurrent conditions.
6. Recommendations for Accommodations or Interventions.
For the purposes of post-secondary education, accommodations are provided to address specific processing difficulties. The report must provide explicit justification for any suggested accommodations by citing specific features of testing, history and observations of performance.
Supplementary clinical documentation to substantiate current impact of a disability.
In addition to these general forms of documentation, there may also be a need to have a clinician, therapist or counselor complete a CLASS Verification Form. These are typically needed for conditions whose impact may change significantly over relatively short periods of time. Examples include:
- Psychiatric disabilities (e.g., Depression, Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
- Secondary effects of treatment (e.g., medication side-effects, post-operative pain).
If one of these conditions is involved in your case, please contact the CLASS office to discuss the need to have your clinician complete and submit a Verification Form. Separate forms are available for ADHD and for Psychiatric Disabilities.
Guidelines for Documentation of a Cognitive or Psychological Disability for Post Secondary Education
Comprehensive Psycho-educational or Neuropsychological Evaluation
A comprehensive cognitive and psychological assessment is required for any student wishing to qualify for academic support services or accommodations through CLASS. The assessment provides evidence that serves these basic functions:
- substantiates the validity of the diagnosis
- demonstrates the nature and extent of the impact of that disability on academic performance
- provides information helpful in designing appropriate accommodations and academic supports
This information is essential for students with any of a range of diagnoses. The assessment should include testing in the following domains.
- Measures of Cognitive Performance
Examples of batteries that provide broad assessments of cognitive function:- Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - III (WAIS-III)
- Woodcock Johnson - III - Tests of Cognitive Ability
- Differential Abilities Scale (DAS)
- Stanford-Binet IV
Additional measures of information processing should be administered as needed, to substantiate the presence and severity of specific areas of difficulty. Common areas of concern include vocabulary knowledge, lexical retrieval, expressive and receptive language, visual and verbal working memory, long-term memory, attention, spatial orientation, reasoning and problem-solving.
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Measures of Academic Skills and Achievement
Examples of broad batteries measuring academic skills and knowledge:- Scholastic Abilities Test for Adults (SATA)
- Stanford Test of Academic Skills
- Woodcock-Johnson - III - Tests of Achievement
- Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, Second Edition (WIAT-II)
Examples of specific achievement tests:
- Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)
- Nelson - Denny Reading Test
- Stanford Diagnostic Mathematics Test
- Test of Written Language - 3 (TOWL - 3)
- Woodcock Reading Mastery Test
- Diagnostic/Clinical Evaluation for ADHD and Psychiatric Disabilities
Many of these conditions are diagnosed through the use of clinical history, structured interviews, check-lists. Though these measures are well-accepted as valid procedures for diagnosing the presence of conditions when used by skilled clinicians, they do not necessarily provide the type of information that is useful in developing accurate and effective accommodations plans or programs of academic support and intervention. It is vital to these purposes that the clinical report include specific information on the nature and degree of the impact of the condition on the student’s ability to function in an academic setting. Specific recommendations should be made regarding the types of accommodations the student will need, and how these accommodations address the particular effects of the condition.
- Verification Forms
Due to variations in the impact of some psychological or psychiatric disabilities on academic performance over time, CLASS staff may require verification of a student’s current condition from the treating clinician. The ADHD Verification Form and the Psychiatric Verification Form are designed to obtain that information. The treating clinician is ordinarily the person best equipped to respond to questions about medication trials, current educational impact, current compliance with treatment plan, and types of accommodation needed. Students with these conditions may be required to have these forms completed and returned to the class office twice a year. The forms may be obtained from the CLASS office, and can be returned to the office by hand (Foss 17), mail (2211 Riverside CB#57, Minneapolis, MN 55454) or fax (612-330-1137).
