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From Studies to Services:
Learning Disabilities and Their Involvement at the University of Illinois
"I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to
feel oneself so completely outclassed and left behind at the beginning of the race.” This was
spoken by Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister and also a successful individual
with a learning disability (“What Are Learning Disabilities?,” n.d.). Individuals with learning
disabilities have great knowledge and wisdom that they can contribute to this world if given the
opportunity that every other person is given in order to achieve their academic goals.
Surprisingly, these opportunities for equality were not always present at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. In fact, learning disabilities on campus only used to be an entity due to
scholarly research by professors, faculty, staff, and students. This paper explores how learning
disabilities were a presence on the Urbana-Champaign campus. It discusses how it took thirty
years to go from studying learning disabilities in children to supplying actual academic
accommodations to University of Illinois students.
Methods
My goal in this paper is to express the evolution of the impact that this campus had on
learning disabilities. A preponderance of the current information that has been documented and
recorded relates to physical disabilities. Due to this, the use of the University of Illinois
Archives is next to impossible when trying to research non-visible disabilities. A large amount
of my research was actually found in the archives of the Daily Illini, the campus newspaper. I
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did research laws and regulations of interest such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. These findings gave me some key years to focus on.
By using these years and the Daily Illini articles, I could pinpoint a few professors, important
names, and research about my topic that was taking place at the University of Illinois. From a
particular Daily Illini article, I came across the name Dr. Sydney Bijou. His research is later
mentioned in my project and had a big impact on the matter of using learning disabilities as an
area of study at the university. These articles also gave me other key points of interest such as
Project SCREEN and helped me see the abrupt change from a campus that studies people with
learning disabilities to a campus that services people with learning disabilities.
Once making the shift from studies to services, most of my research came from the 1998
book Expanding Horizons, which tells the history of DRES.
Findings
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recognized learning disabilities and
validated their existence originally not by accommodating their students with learning
disabilities, but rather by researching the prevalence of learning disabilities in young children.
One of the earliest research initiatives at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign started
with well-renown professor Dr. Sidney Bijou. Robert A. Henderson, a chairperson of the
Department of Special Education on campus in 1965, was put in charge of the task of recruiting
Bijou from the University of Washington to start research on the Illinois campus. Henderson,
along with Sam Kirk (director of the Institute for Research on Exceptional Children), prevailed
in getting Bijou to make the move to the Midwest. Bijou moved not for the colleagues nor for
the Department of Psychology, but rather for the school that “valued his research and scholarship
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in developmental disabilities.” In a letter to one of his past colleagues, Bijou explains that he
was highly interested in, “the vigorous program in the experimental analysis of children's
behavior at all levels” (Morris, 2008). The University of Illinois was showing interest in the area
of developmental and learning disabilities, but in the year 1965, they were not forward-thinking
enough to start considering the disabilities of their own students.
Research at the time even addressed the possible accommodations and needs of students
with learning disabilities, but this did not transcend to campus philosophy. The same year Bijou
came to Illinois, he established and directed the psychology department’s Child Behavior
Laboratory. This lab included the works and efforts of psychologists, teachers, and graduate
students, and it helped to discover new improvements for instructional methods, materials, and
accommodations. Within Bijou’s lab, Jeffrey Grimm, the research associate and co-project
director, created the stark belief that “severely disturbed and handicapped children can make
academic progress when programs are tailored to their needs” (“Learning Difficulties,” 1972).
This is the same kind of tailoring that can be seen at the university today. Students who are
registered through the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services (also referred
to as DRES) can get such accommodations that are tailored to their specific needs (“Academic
Accommodations,” 2012). Tailored accommodations are particularly important for non-visible
disabilities. A ramp should work for every wheelchair, but having an assistant reader or some
other learning accommodation is not going to address every type of learning disability, and the
University of Illinois has certainly taken this attitude and has tried to expand their
accommodations in the past couple of decades.
The school would soon see a cause for change, but change did not happen overnight. The
year following the work of Bijou and Grimm, there was national legislation passed that finally
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addressed academic accommodations. The United States Department of Education states that
educational systems “must ensure that no handicapped student is subject to discrimination in the
recipient’s program because of the absence of necessary auxiliary educational aids,” and they
enforced this ruling using Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Both public and private
schools had to abide by these rules. National legislation also stated that any entities “that offer
examinations or courses related to applications, licensing, certification, or credentialing for
secondary or post-secondary education, professional, or trade purposes shall offer such
examinations or courses in a place and manner that is accessible to persons with disabilities or
offer alternative accessible arrangements for such individuals” ("Private Colleges and Other
Post-Secondary Institutions,” n.d.). Even with such legislation, the University of Illinois does
not openly accept students with learning disabilities, yet. It will still be another several years
before they see their first registered student with a non-visible disability.
National law did attempt to accommodate the needs of individuals with learning
disabilities, and what is so amazing is that this legislation really focused on post-secondary
education, but the university at the time still had not begun to see the flaw in its own system.
They refused to look at what they could do for their own students. A Chicago firm called
Computer Psychometric Affiliates Inc. had been working for three years (starting in 1972) on a
test known as Project SCREEN, a computer-graded test that could check for learning disabilities
in children. At the time, there was no accurate large-scale test that administration or educators
could give to detect learning disabilities, and such a test at the time was in great demand nationwide (“Learning test—Lesson in waste?,” 1975). Screening for learning disabilities usually
occurs at a young age, and at the time, the mid 1970s, diagnosis and treatment was usually at the
discretion of the teacher to notice the problem and to take the necessary steps to help the child.
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There were programs to help students with learning disabilities, but there were several problems
with them at the time. First off, at elementary schools, such programs were not very rare;
however, as the child goes through middle school, high school, and beyond, such programs were
less and less common, and the child’s academic progress would greatly suffer in older levels of
education (Senf & Shushinsky, 1975). Dr. James L. Waldrop of the University of Illinois
responded to Project SCREEN, and in an evaluation of the project he criticized that “the time has
long since come for someone to ask whether any state department of education should be
subsidizing the development of a test battery in this manner. . . [the state of Illinois] has spent too
much money on SCREEN. It seems fruitless to continue in such an effort. The results are
simply not likely worth it.” This seems like a harsh criticism for such a thoughtful and useful
product, but the truth was that the state had already spent over a million dollars on the project,
and there were high amounts of skepticism that the project would pay off (“Learning test—
Lesson in waste?,” 1975). It is sad how disability research was only of interest due to monetary
value. This test had the potential to pay back to the state of Illinois, so the state gave it over a
million dollars’ worth of funding. (“Learning test—Lesson in waste?,” 1975). If they could
have gotten money from accommodating students rather than producing a testing device to sell
nationally, then it is without a doubt this funding would have been allocated to internal
accommodations. Such sophisticated testing could have had the potential to cause massive
change within the university. It was two years after the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and there
had yet to be any student with a non-visible disability register with DRES. Despite the adversity
Project SCREEN was facing, there was still an increase in demand for academic
accommodations for children with learning disabilities for a number of reasons: 1) As diagnostic
tests became more sophisticated, children were diagnosed at younger ages 2) Parent awareness
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about such disabilities increased 3) As need went up, teachers could no longer supply the needed
attention, so separate classes and specialists were needed 4) Overall population growth 5) As
administration reacted to too much representation of learning disabilities, community support
and local district commitment began to wane (Senf & Shushinsky, 1975). Despite these rising
demands, the University of Illinois still did not offer accommodations for students with learning
disabilities. Whenever talking about individuals with learning disabilities, they are often referred
to as “youngsters” or “children,” but there was going to be a day when all of these diagnosed
children would grow to young adults, and the demand for services at the collegiate level would
be too much to ignore. The assumption could have been that these students may never succeed
academically in order to achieve higher education, but this assumption is entirely wrong. In fact,
just a few years later in 1979, the Division of Disability Resources & Educational Services
finally had one student registered with a specific learning disability (“Prologue,” 1998).
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was really taking its time when it came to
supplying its students with academic accommodations, but it was by no means the only school
that was pushing off the inevitable. It is incredible to see the delay between laws and equality
that occurs, whether it is race, gender, class, or in this situation, disability. This university, like
many of its kind, was finally given a boost towards equality. In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed
the Americans with Disabilities Act which supplied civil rights protection for people with
disabilities. It was modeled after Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Civil
Rights Act. The ADA of 1990 was regarded as “the most sweeping disability rights legislation
in history” ("Disability Rights Timeline,” n.d.). This act is where the idea of “reasonable
accommodations” originates. In response to this national legislation, the University of Illinois
placed DRES in charge of providing reasonable academic accommodations for any individual
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who had documented cognitive and/or psychiatric disabilities. Due to the ADA of 1990 and the
Rehabilitation Act of 1978, any University of Illinois student who has attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder, a psychiatric disorder, and/or a learning disability may be eligible for
auxiliary aids or academic adjustments ("Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning
Disorders,” 2007).
Within less than a decade, this national change boosted the university’s progress with
academic accommodations exponentially. DRES saw a huge increase in the number of students
with learning disabilities. Before the turn of the millennium, out of the 400 students with
disabilities that DRES catered to, one-third of these students had psychological disabilities,
ADHD, or learning disabilities (“Prologue,” 1998). DRES was facing issues trying to meet the
demands of the vast increase in the population of students with learning disabilities. They helped
fix this discrepancy by adding more professional and graduate staff members who specialized in
learning disabilities. They also worked on developing better diagnostic tests for such disabilities,
and started implementing electronic faculty notification letters to help with advanced notification
of staff. At this time DRES was already regularly supplying classroom accommodations such as:
auxiliary aids (note takers, laboratory and library assistants, and interpreters), text conversions to
accessible formats (Braille, tape, enlarged print, and electronic), assistive listening systems,
assistive communication and information technology support, priority registration, course and
curriculum time extensions, disability related counseling, as well as study skills training. Over
fifteen years ago, more than 80,000 pages of print had been altered to Braille, audiotape,
enlarged print, and electronic print because of the massive increase in the number of students
with verbal learning disabilities (“Prologue,” 1998).
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The attitude of the University of Illinois has completely changed. The law used to drag
them along to do bare minimum for their students with learning disabilities, and now they are
striving to go above and beyond the limited requirements. Even since those accommodations
were installed on campus, DRES is still altering, evolving, and adding on to their list of
academic accommodations for students with learning disabilities. Presently, they have taken the
previously mentioned accommodations and have looked for a way to make them even more
accessible for their students. Things such as text conversions are available as long as the student
submits the syllabus including the videos or books that are needed to be altered ("Academic
Accommodations," 2012). During the first half of the 21st century, there will be more and more
demand for assistive technology. Not only must the University keep up their quality, cuttingedge accommodations for people with visible disabilities, but they must also broaden and
strengthen the accommodations that help students with cognitive impairments (“Prologue,”
1998).
Even since the turn of the century, DRES have not only built upon their past academic
accommodations and assistive technology, they have added even more assistive tools to their
repertoire. Some more recent additions include a non-primary language exemption. Students
who have difficulty with languages can substitute different coursework for foreign language
requirements. Additionally, DRES even works with the study abroad office to give students with
disabilities who wish to study abroad the full college experience. DRES will contact the host
university and work to supply the needed accommodations ("Academic Accommodations,”
2012).
The University of Illinois certainly has come a long way once they started focusing
inward in order to help their own students.
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Recommendations
The University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana certainly has made great progress in
accommodating individuals with learning disabilities, but by no means was it as quick of a
progression as it could have been. Starting as early as 1965, there was research being done about
learning disabilities for children, in hopes of possibly improving their lives, but really the most
help they could have given was by focusing on the needs of their current students. They should
have focused on improving that which they had control over.
The University of Illinois and Tim Nugent had great mentality when trying to stay on the
cutting edge for visible disabilities, but the one weakness was that this forward-thinking did not
infiltrate into other aspects such as accommodations for people with non-visible disabilities.
Instead of waiting for legislation to tell them that there needs to be change, the university should
always be looking out for the needs of their individual students. In Tony Greif’s paper, he
mentions how the Greek system often used students with disabilities as philanthropy projects
instead of reaching out to them and including them in social activities (Greif, 2008). This same
attitude was very similar to the university’s when they found a place for learning disabilities as
research projects instead of finding a place for them in normal campus life.
Beyond this, it would be good to see how the University of Illinois is fixing its past
mistakes by staying on top of campus regulations to involve all students. Another area of
interest to further look into would be why there was such a delay between legislation and the
integration of students with learning disabilities. When it comes to integration delays with
matters like race, usually it is because of hostility or other discriminatory laws, but learning
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disabilities are invisible, so hostility was most likely not the issue at hand. It would also be good
to research what sort of future accommodations are being considered right now and to chronicle
how these accommodation are being researched and applied right here on campus.
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References
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