Do Accommodations Reduce Academic Rigor for 2e Students?
Perhaps the better question to ask is: Which still-emerging skills might be standing between the student’s advanced thinking and their ability to demonstrate it?
By Jacqui Byrne
When we talk about accommodations for twice-exceptional students, one concern that often comes up is: If we change the assignment, are we lowering the bar? The answer depends on which bar we’re talking about.
There’s an important distinction between intellectual rigor and what I’ll call “product rigor.” Intellectual rigor is the thinking. It’s analyzing a complex idea, making connections, evaluating evidence, organizing thoughts, using logic, and building an argument.
Product rigor is the ability to package that thinking into the expected form: a five-paragraph essay, a research paper, a polished presentation, a completed project, or another finished product.
For many 2e students, those two abilities develop at very different rates—so perhaps the better question to ask is: Which still-emerging skills might be standing between the student’s thinking and their ability to demonstrate it?
Imagine a ninth grader who can discuss a historical question with remarkable depth. They understand competing perspectives, draw sophisticated connections, support their position with evidence, and respond thoughtfully to questions.
Then they’re asked to turn all of that into a five-page paper, and suddenly, the student who had so much to say is stuck. Writing the paper requires another set of skills layered on top of the intellectual work: translating ideas into written language, revising, and keeping track of all the pieces along the way.
That’s where thoughtful accommodation comes in. Suppose that ninth grader gives a well-organized presentation instead. They’ve done substantial intellectual work. The presentation can serve as an accessible way to demonstrate that thinking while the student continues building the skills needed to produce a formal written paper. And if you look closely, you may find that they’ve already accomplished all the requirements but one: Perhaps they developed a thesis, selected evidence, structured an argument, explained their reasoning, and answered questions about their conclusions, and the only missing piece is the essay itself.
We should always aim for intellectual rigor, and accommodate to help students grow into product rigor.
An accommodation can be part of a developmental pathway. Today, a student might organize an argument with a teacher, then deliver it orally. Next time, they might use that same structure to create an outline before writing. Later, they may draft the paper in sections, with checkpoints along the way. Each step preserves the intellectual challenge while building greater independence with the product.
Sometimes adults look at an accommodation and wonder how a student will manage without it in college. But it’s important to remember that the ninth grader sitting in front of us today is not the same student who will be heading off to college. They have four more years to become that college student. Those years are for growth.
A student can strengthen written expression, executive functioning, organization, self-advocacy, and other skills over time. The work we give them now should help develop those skills while continuing to challenge them intellectually, building on their strengths and expanding their capacity for increasingly complex thinking and learning.
The goal is to keep the intellectual ceiling high while providing the scaffolding students need to reach it—and, over time, helping their ability to produce the work catch up with the complexity of their thinking.
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About Jacqui Byrne
Jacqui Byrne is the founder of FlexSchool—an accredited private school where gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) students can develop their talents among intellectual peers in a nurturing environment. An award-winning educator and sought-after speaker, Jacqui serves on the Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education Advisory Council and holds a degree from Yale University. She is also the parent of twice-exceptional kids.