Episode 96: Supporting Differently Abled Students with Dr. Perry LaRoque, Author of Taking Flight: The Guide to College for Diverse Learners and Non-Traditional Students and Founder of Mansfield Hall
Dr. Perry LaRoque is the author of Taking Flight: The Guide to College for Diverse Learners and Non-Traditional Students and the Founder of Mansfield Hall, a residential college support program in Vermont, Wisconsin, and Oregon. He has earned his doctorate and special education from the University of Wisconsin and served in various leadership roles serving at rescue and people with disabilities. Before returning for his doctoral work, Dr. La Roche worked in an assisted living care, facility for adults with intellectual disabilities, and taught special education in several public schools.
How Is Higher Education With Their Ability To Teach Students With Disabilities?
Disability is sort of the last aspect of diversity that we often forget about. It is an interactive effect across all of the different diversities whether it interacts with race or gender. It has also been largely forgotten about. Over the past ten years, we have certainly seen a much bigger focus on disability as it pertains to higher education but we still have a long way to go. We still with our primary schools, K -12 over the past fifty years have started to focus more heavily on how we can serve students with disabilities in the classroom. There is significant movement in the direction of inclusion and mainstreaming and focusing on the learner. Once those students leave high school and want to pursue the next chapter in their life, they are facing a much more ableist world where in some ways it had become just accepted. Colleges to this day are only governed by section 504 and ADA beyond not discriminating and only needing to provide reasonable accommodations. There is no more obligation for them to provide services to diverse learners or students with disabilities. What has been happening now is that you see a much larger portion of that population seeking a college degree because K-12 has changed its paradigm and overall is doing a better job at serving the youth with disabilities. These students do not have the same level of support or expectations or services that they were receiving in high school so that transition from a nurtured environment to a college where the switch becomes from a team mentality to an individual mentality. The book Taking Flight was written in a way to give these students the advantage of conquering college. These students can learn. It is navigating the bureaucracy and the environment, and all the newness and the transitions that can get in the way of them being successful. Colleges are getting there but they are following the same track that public schools have followed having to react to more students with disabilities being in schools, and then creating these separate special education settings only to realize that that was not the best approach. This leads them to come up with a more inclusive, mainstream approach to education. We are seeing these separate programs trying to plug the leaks in the system and hopefully, we are moving in a direction where colleges are realizing that this diverse group of students is here to stay. The best way to approach it is to look at pedagogy and how we can provide services and supports that meet the demands of all students rather than just students with disabilities.
Why Aren’t Systematic Changes Occurring And How Can They Be Pushed?
The law governs how we educate students with disabilities until they graduate from high school. After that, there is no specific law other than workplace law, which is section 504 and ADA that governs how or what we are obligated to do for people with disabilities, and that includes colleges. The biggest problem is money. They receive money but it is not enough. The line of funding a post-high school for students with disabilities, if they qualify, has to do more with independent living and self-care whether it is SSDI or Medicaid waivers. People qualify for those when they’re generally not college capable. You’re in this double edge sword where there is money available, but the money is available for people who can’t attend college. On the other hand, we see colleges regularly making their primary focus on the retention of students. We know that many small colleges are struggling right now with recruiting students so in some ways that retention becomes so important and even big universities are focusing on retention. Retention comes from how to serve those students who are on the edge. Only about 60% of students who start college will finish college. We also know that roughly between 20% to 30% of students with the diagnosed disability who starts college will finish. On the investment side for both the government and college is worth it to bring more support to these students. What we know is that good instruction and good pedagogy meet the needs of all students. Having colleges start to focus more on what they can do for that very diverse group of students they have from disability to no disability and everything in between will greatly impact the retention of all students and improve their learning. Colleges need to start looking at how they can integrate those students into the classroom in an effective way that benefits everybody who is in the classroom.
What Encouraged Dr. Perry LaRoque To Write Taking Flight: The Guide to College for Diverse Learners and Non-Traditional Students
With the Creation of Mansfield Hall. people would often ask, what the most important thing you are doing, and the response would be to be able to help the students demystify this college experience and help them to figure out where they should get the support services, how they use those supports and services, and how they advocate for themselves. They are getting help along the way coaching them through all those situations. There is a lack of intent and motivation for the colleges to support these types of students. When Mansfield Hall started, there were about 10 college board programs across the country but now we have over 300. The problem is that the schools and society have this all arguing over cost whereas programs are trying to do it for as little money as possible or are trying to do the most they can with the money that they have. We are seeing programs overall having to make compromises over what kinds of things they can provide based on those financial resources where in reality we should go back to the model of being able to provide kids with what they need. What Dr. LaRoque was seeing overall was what he was doing, although there is a huge amount of support and services. One staff for every two students so there is a lot of direct coaching. There are those perspectives on how to do college. Dr. LaRoque felt like he could really benefit the greater population and try to get the word out to more families and students on things they can do to make college easier without necessarily needing the services and the services that are going to be provided or how you are going to actually use all of it. The book was meant to demystify. With his experience as a college professor for seven years, he gained an insider’s perspective on the hidden rules of college. The book is not only for students with disabilities but for students overall.
Contact Dr. Perry LaRoque: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrylaroque/
Learn more about Mansfield Hall: https://mansfieldhall.org/
Get your copy of Taking Flight: The Guide to College for Diverse Learners and Non-Traditional Students: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Flight-Students-Disabilities-Learners/dp/1642796069/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=perry+laroque&qid=1567091138&s=gateway&sr=8-1
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