Higher education poses several unique challenges, whether entering college, completing trade school, or earning your post-graduate degree. College students with learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia, deal with those same challenges, and more.
Let’s get real: only 20% of community college students in remedial math classes advance to college-level courses (The Hechinger Report). Most students with learning disabilities will take remedial courses, such as dyscalculic students. Less than 25% of students in remedial math courses will earn a degree within eight years – The odds are stacked against these young adults.
So, how do you survive college with Dyscalculia? College students with dyscalculia have some options, including disability services or special education services, specialized learning strategies, and accommodations. However, many students turn to homework and course completion services to get through their degrees and required math classes.
Continue reading to learn more about how students with Dyscalculia can achieve academic success, stay focused, and pass their degrees.
Dyscalculic students in college
Dyscalculia is a medically recognized math learning disability by the American Psychiatric Association. It is also known as “number dyslexia” and “math dyslexia,” and it is not related to Intelligence Quotient (IQ): most with dyscalculia have average to average IQ. Unlike other learning disabilities, dyscalculic explicitly affects the student’s ability to learn math concepts and facts, manage accurate math calculations, critical thinking, reason and solve math problems, and other math-related skills.
Unfortunately, the fast pace, large lecture format with peer support does not provide sufficient support for students with dyscalculic. Most students are forced to repeat remedial courses but inevitably repeat classes due to failures that devastate their GPA and jeopardize financial aid and scholarships. These students often accumulate significant debt with student loans and failed classes.
Dyscalculia or math learning disability prevents students from meeting minimum quantitative reasoning requirements at the college level, even for liberal arts majors. Dyscalculic students usually test into remedial math classes on placement exams, like Elementary Math Concepts, Math 085, Math 095, Pre-Algebra, and Elementary Algebra.
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Let us hit you with some disturbing facts:
- Less than a third of all community college students in remedial math classes will continue to college-level courses in the subject.
- Less than 25% will earn a degree within the following eight years.
- 25% of four-year college students taking remedial courses drop out.
- Only 37% of remedial students at four-year colleges go on to finish their college courses.
People that live with Dyscalculia do not simply have difficulty with math or an average ability with math. It is far more complex.
Deficits can cause the condition with one or more of the following:
- Working memory and attention
- Making sense of symbols as quantities
- Poor executive functioning in the adolescent brain (this usually improves in adulthood)
- Developing visual and spatial skills
Students with dyscalculia in college often report frustration, anger, and anxiety over the inability to perform and feel misunderstood or labeled by their peers and teachers. Math anxiety or panic attacks are prevalent, which affects the quality of their experience and daily life.
A dyscalculic student usually performs adequately in all areas except mathematics. Often they excel at reading, writing, and speaking, and most learning tasks come easily. There is more support and investment in elementary and high school, but this rarely continues through to college. Most colleges do not give grades for effort and are often solely independent of summative exam performance.
Dyscalculia signs
Making math errors alone is not a sure-fire sign of dyscalculia – everybody makes errors. However, persisting errors across various problems, especially in easy math problems, is a sign of a learning disability.
Other signs that you may live with this learning disability include:
- Dyscalculia includes difficulty signifying number’s in the world (e.g., three and three people)
- Adding backward and forwards
- Difficulty identifying quantities without the aid of counting
- Difficulty remembering very simply aspects of math, for example, times tables
- Trouble connecting numbers and symbols to amounts
- Difficulty with mental math
- Trouble with counting money
- Inability to tell the time from an analog display
- Visual and spatial direction is poor, including making sense of right from left
- Troubles with identifying patterns and number sequences
- Directional confusion
- Finger-counting is also a typical sign, but it is not evidence of the disability alone. Finger-counting may suggest an issue, especially for easy, frequently repeated calculations.
While dyscalculic students are usually diagnosed in elementary, middle, or high school, adults can get diagnosed later in their college experience. Most young people have many gaps in their math knowledge.
Adult dyscalculia diagnosis
Those seeking diagnosis should satisfy these criteria:
- People with dyscalculia display at minimum one of six symptoms related to trouble with learning and using academic skills. This includes trouble with the mastery of elementary numbers plus the disciplinary rules of math.
- The affected academic skills do not meet what is expected of someone at the person seeking a diagnosis’s age, interfering with school, work, or everyday tasks.
- There would be evidence of learning difficulties during school, even if problems became more severe later.
- Previous medical history and other environmental factors are considered irrelevance (or relevant, depending on the diagnosis), including cognitive limitations, neurological disorders, psychosocial adversity, or poor quality/lack of math instruction.
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College level accommodations
American Federal laws require high schools to provide reasonable accommodations for students with learning disabilities, such as dyscalculia. However, the rules are not the same for university or community colleges. The Americans With Disabilities Act ensures equal access to education without discrimination. College students with learning disabilities have options, but they often need to take the initiative to find out the available accommodations.
If you’re looking to engage with your college for classroom accommodations, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) encourages young people with dyscalculia to receive strategic accommodations in colleges such as:
- Extra time allowance on class tasks and exams
- Math planning technology
- Calculators during test-taking
- Changing the complexity of the math problems
- Breaking down complex math problems into smaller steps
- Visual aids (e.g., posters, notebooks) to remind of fundamental concepts
- One-to-one teaching to improve core math skills
- Offering additional information via
- Online lessons, some of which may be interactive
- A project involving physical objects
You may wish to engage with your specific lecturer for more specific academic interventions. Some examples of specialized learning strategies include:
- Informing lectures of prior knowledge or new concepts
- Requesting to be paired with someone who may understand your learning disabilities so that you can see other student’s thinking process
- Request to work in small groups that can use physical objects to make sense of math like manipulatives
- Request to have regular check-ins
- Ask to provide a vocabulary list before the course to pre-learn math vocabulary and symbols
- Request to make a list of math formulas for use in class
- Request frequent breaks during long classes
- Request to use a calculator, manipulatives, coins, and other kinesthetic strategies
- Request to use a voice calculator as it helps recognize any errors that they have pressed. Additionally, hearing the calculated answer can provide a check against the numbers that are mistaken for others or reversed by those with Dyslexia or Dyscalculia.
- Informing the lecturer about strategies that help solve a problem, such as talking through the process, visual aids, and visuals, make more sense to students with Dyscalculia.
- Use graph paper to align numbers and work out problems since the numbers often seem to move for dyscalculia, which will help keep the student’s thoughts straight.
- Request to limit the number of math problems or homework to ten or at least enough to gain understanding rather than the whole assignment.
Managing dyscalculia in college
Using specific study skills may also help to achieve academic success for a college student with specific learning disabilities:
Speak or write the math problem
For the dyscalculic student, math concepts are too abstract, and numbers just squiggles. Verbalizing a problem with a tutor or writing it down in sentence form, perhaps with basic text-to-speech technology like Google Translate, can help with greater recognition of what to do. Even rephrasing word problems can help with organizing information and seeing solutions.
Draw the math problem
Drawing the problem can also help learners see relationships and understand the math problem before them. Again, there are multiple ways to visualize the problem and images closer to a student’s understanding of the problem.
Break down a math problem
Students with dyscalculia can quickly become overwhelmed by a math problem or concept, primarily if it extends on math knowledge they are already aware of —which they may not have retained. Separating a problem into its discrete operations that need to be solved one time can help students see connections and steer clear of overload.
Use everyday objects
Keeping math problems relevant to students’ daily life can help them more readily comprehend concepts and see the relationships between numbers. Items like measuring cups, rulers, and other small countable objects like stationery can make math less abstract and intimidating.
Revise a little and often
Dyscalculia is partly due to difficulty retaining math-related information, and because of this, it becomes hard to master new skills that extend on previous lessons. Short, frequent review sessions — ten to twenty minutes every day — mean the information is potentially more likely to be recalled. Creating written or drawn references such as flashcards can help with quick reviews.
Recording lectures
Recording lectures or tutorials allows you to rewatch, perhaps at a slower speed, stopping and rewinding as necessary to comprehend math concepts. Some college disability services loan smartpens to students with learning disabilities. These pens digitize note-taking and drawings and record the lecture while you write. These devices are perfect for students with short or long-term memory issues.
Memorizing basic facts
Memorizing multiplication tables, a written expression, or step-by-step instructions can help relieve math anxiety. Creating written or drawn references such as flashcards can help with memorization or posters.
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What do you do if you can’t pass math in college?
Unfortunately, many students with learning disabilities, including dyscalculia, will struggle to complete math classes and degrees even with appropriate accommodations.
Dyscalculia prevents students from meeting minimum quantitative reasoning requirements at the college level. Even students with liberal arts majors will need to pass a College Algebra or Finite Math class.
So, what do you do if you can’t pass math in college? Use a course completion service, such as Finish My Math Class™, which allows students with learning disabilities, including Dyscalculia, and other students to pass their math class and enjoy their college experience. These services are discrete and approach math confidently. Students pay to someone take their entire online course, specific assignments, or homework.
Other benefits include:
- It saves time, so you don’t spend hours working on math
- Good grades allow you to get your desired career or post-graduate course
- Focus on major or career-specific subjects
- Relieve math anxiety and reduce stress
- Focusing on personal or private circumstances.
Many students are worried about safety and security and the legality of these services. There is no law against hiring a math tutor in the United States. Choose the right Course Completion Company that makes security and safety a priority. Choose Finish My Math Class.
Final thoughts
Finish My Math Class™ has worked with hundreds of students who struggle with a math class that unfairly compromises future post-graduate study and careers. Our homework completion services are legitimate, and we strive to give students, dyscalculic students good grades and finish their degrees. If you want a highly-rated homework service, do not hesitate to contact us today for any other math homework.
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References
American Psychiatric Association (2014). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. DSM-V. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing
American Psychiatric Association. (2018, November). What is Specific Learning Disorder? https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/specific-learning-disorder/what-is-specific-learning-disorder [Accessed 28th January 2021]
Bailey, T, Jeong, D. W., Cho, S. (2010) Referral, enrollment, and completion in developmental education sequences in community colleges. Economics of Education Review, 29(2), 255-270, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2009.09.002.
Bird, R. (2017). The Dyscalculia Toolkit. Sage Publications.
Butrymowicz, S. (2017) Most colleges enroll many students who aren’t prepared for higher education. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-enroll-students-arent-prepared-higher-education/
Haberstroh, S., & Schulte-Körne, G. (2019). The Diagnosis and Treatment of Dyscalculia. Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 116(7), 107–114. https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2019.0107
Kaufmann, L., & von Aster, M. (2012). The diagnosis and management of dyscalculia. Deutsches Arzteblatt international, 109(45), 767–778. https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.2012.0767
Nietzel, t., (2019) Remedial Education: Escaping Higher Education’s Hotel California. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2018/10/22/remedial-education-escaping-higher-educations-hotel-california/?sh=21fee6e5f20b
Soares, N., Evans, T., & Patel, D. R. (2018). Specific learning disability in mathematics: a comprehensive review. Translational Pediatrics, 7(1), 48–62. https://doi.org/10.21037/tp.2017.08.03
What to become. (2021) 13 Upsetting Stats About College Remediation Rates [2021]. https://whattobecome.com/blog/college-remediation-rates/
