Unintended Consequences of No Test Enrollment: FC in College Classrooms
Today’s blog post focuses on the no test admission requirements at colleges and universities across the United States that may unintentionally contribute to the use of pseudoscientific practices in the classroom. These requirements, designed to help students who perform well on day-to-day tasks at school but struggle with test taking, open the pathway for the use of Facilitated Communication (FC). Under the guise of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), facilitators control typed messages as they support individuals with profound communication difficulties in selecting letters on a letter board or other device.
Image by MD Duran
Oberlin College, Whittier College, UC Berkeley, Rollins College, and Harvard Extension School, to name just a few, have graduated students likely using FC as their primary form of communication. These facilitator-student pairs either openly admit to using FC, have a documented use of Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), or use a self-described one finger hunt-and-peck style typing method that requires the help of an assistant and is a hallmark of FC. While it is not possible to determine a student’s understanding and mastery of language and literacy skills (or lack of it) through media reporting of these events, the omnipresence of an assistant with whom the student relies on to type or receive cues to speak raises questions about authorship. Evidence-based AAC allows students to interact with communication devices without interference from—or even the presence of—an assistant.
Applications from non-speaking individuals with profound communication difficulties are not common at the college and university level. Accessibility Officers, Admission Staff, and Instructors may be tasked for the first time with distinguishing between legitimate forms of AAC, which should be employed, and FC, which should not.
Even the most well-meaning university officials may miss the subtleties of facilitator cuing by relying on otherwise legitimate qualitative measures (e.g., observations, interviews, portfolios) to assess student authorship during FC use. Only reliably controlled measures that blind facilitators from test protocols can rule in or rule out facilitator influence. The weight of evidence, as it stands to date, is that facilitators, not the individuals being subjected to it, are controlling the messages.
The issue of enrollment and accommodations may be confounded when
1) Proponents rebrand FC, calling it supported typing, typing to communicate, rapid prompting method, spelling to communicate or other creative names. Some savvy facilitators overtly avoid mentioning FC or its variants and/or misleadingly refer to it as AAC. Even when instructors are aware that FC has been discredited, they may not realize these variants are the exact same thing.
Facilitator cuing is integral to how FC “works” regardless of what proponents call it. FC’s one finger hunt-and-peck style typing lends itself to facilitator cuing and control. (See the Ideomotor Response). Facilitators hold boards in the air, change vocal inflections, provide hand signals and other cues that instructors may miss because they are focusing on the student, not the facilitator. Students do not have to be touched to be cued.
2) School personnel are unaware that FC is discredited with many organizations opposing its use. These organizations cite lack of evidence, facilitator control, prompt dependency, and the potential harms (e.g., false allegations of abuse) as reasons not to use FC. Some consider FC use a human rights violation.
3) School personnel are unaware that FC is not considered a legitimate form of AAC (see ISAAC opposition statement). FC is not evidence-based nor does it allow students to express themselves independently and without facilitator control. Some facilitators claim FC is “interpretation,” but facilitators share no training, certification, or licensing standards with, say, interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing who must take advanced training to qualify as interpreters in a school setting (See Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, Inc.).
If the facilitator will not leave the room during a student interview or hovers over the student and communication device, there’s a good chance the student is being facilitated and not responding independently.
4) Facilitated messages are pre-programmed into communication devices using FC. Prepping for class ahead of time is a reasonable accommodation for students using AAC. Typing can be laborious. However, with FC, student responses are reliant on facilitator assistance in or outside the classroom. A student capable of pressing a button to activate the communication device on their own may appear to be responding “independently,” when, in fact, the response was generated with facilitator input.
5) Public and private high schools allow facilitated students to take AP courses. Transcripts and applications may not reflect the fact that courses were completed with facilitator assistance. Facilitators are told not to use the terms FC/S2C/RPM on individual education plans but use less conspicuous terms such as “communication by typing.”
6) Professionals allow students to take standardized tests (including I.Q. tests) using FC. Drastic changes in scores occur when facilitators are allowed to assist during the test (e.g., 69 unassisted to 164 using RPM; 29 to 133 using FC.). These scores are considered proof of locked in intelligence by proponents, but do not address issues of authorship or independent mastery of skills. School officials need to ask whether the tests were taken with or without facilitated assistance.
7) Homeschool portfolios may not reflect FC use in project completion. Admissions documents (e.g., secondary school reports and letters of recommendations) may be filled out by parents who also serve as the student’s facilitator.
8) Admission interviews and/or course instruction are completed online, with limited contact with classroom instructors. It may not be apparent that facilitators are cuing off-screen during student responses. These editing tricks, btw, are also rampant in pro-FC movies, television interviews, and YouTube videos.
9) Individuals using FC are not tested for authorship using procedures that blind facilitators from test protocols (e.g., a facilitator unfamiliar with course content assists the individual with exams).
I believe the use of FC is a systemic problem that starts well before the application for admissions is sent to prospective colleges. Proponents continue to work toward getting FC into elementary and high school programs and, in some cases, have met with success.
Regardless, proponents’ extraordinary claims of independent communication are not backed up with reliable evidence and should not be part of the accommodations provided for students who deserve access to evidence-based methods and techniques.
I suspect that once facilitated students are accepted into the college classroom, individual instructors would not have the backing of administrators should questions of authorship arise. The issue is with FC, a flawed technique, and of facilitator control over the typed messages, but fear of being accused of ableism or discrimination toward individuals with disabilities prevents people from expressing their concerns aloud. It is also a terrible position to be in for instructors who suspect a colleague may be cuing student responses, even when the facilitator is sincere and the cues are inadvertent.
Questions of FC/S2C/RPM need to be addressed well before facilitators become embedded in the classroom.
To my knowledge, Syracuse University’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders is the only department in the U.S. with a public statement opposing FC and Supported Typing. They have long since distanced themselves from Syracuse University’s Inclusion and Communication Initiatives (formerly the Facilitated Communication Institute) which never stopped promoting FC. In 2016, a series ran in The Daily Orange, Syracuse’s student newspaper, questioning the school’s allegiance to a discredited technique, which the administration appears to have ignored.
The University of Virginia’s Brain Institute hosts the Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) and promotes evidence-based research and treatments, as does Penn State’s AAC Learning Center, but, I was unable to find a public statement regarding FC/S2C/RPM on their websites. I wrote to them but received no reply.
Neither program is involved with student admissions, but it might be helpful for individuals seeking information about FC to hear from these programs, whether they be prospective students, parents, or university staff. There are FC supporters on staff at both these universities. Proponents take silence as a “yes” to keep promoting FC.
Without doubt, individuals with communication difficulties deserve access to legitimate AAC. Accommodations should be made to assist these individuals in pursuing life, educational, and career goals, including attendance at universities and colleges, if they so desire. However, these accommodations should be evidence-based and allow students to complete the coursework independently and free from facilitator control. FC builds dependence on the facilitator, does not guarantee comprehension of course materials, and prevents individuals from expressing their own, unique experiences and ideas.
Lake Region Community College used to have a public policy regarding FC, stating:
“Since it cannot be definitively demonstrated that by using facilitated communication the student, as opposed to the facilitator, has mastery of the subject, facilitated communication is not a reasonable or appropriate accommodation that the College is required to provide.” (Full statement here).
For some reason, the college no longer includes this statement on their website.
I wonder just when it became unreasonable for college students to demonstrate independent mastery of their coursework and, in the case of FC/S2C/RPM and other facilitator-reliant techniques, prove they did so without facilitator influence or control?
Note: I’ve been criticized in the past for condemning universities for promoting FC and not singling out specific departments or faculty members (see blog post here). I understand the point, but until universities stop allowing proponents to use the status and prestige of these institutes to promote pseudoscience, then I will continue to call for an administrative change in policy at these universities.