accommodations

Some not getting it stuff I get. Sometimes it's harder to get what people don't get.

I can understand a math teacher not being comfortable being a scribe for a student who writes very slowly because there are other students needing help with tutoring while s/he's being secretary. But to ask "is s/he learning the math if s/he's not writing it?" S/he's dictating exactly what to write, down to the parentheses... (it's factoring - very dictatable). In fact it's awfully obvious to me (when I was scribing 'cause there wasnt' anybody else there anyway) that s/he *was* thinking ... talking aloud through the process.... *because* s/he didn't have to write. Otherwise it would hae been all about moving a pencil, which is not algebra, the last time I checked.
Could the students be really learning it if they were doing it in pen instead of pencil?