I am working on a longer post on this. I ask you, if a child is working her tail off to achieve academic success, with technological support and accomodations, should she not have the same support/accomodations when she takes the SAT?
Learning disabled left behind.
New York attorney JoAnne Simon says she has had more clients whose SAT accommodation requests have been rejected in the last two years than she had in the previous 10 years combined.
"I used to very rarely tangle with the College Board,'' she says. "Now I do it every day.''
Brian O'Reilly of the College Board says the challenge is to keep the test as standardized as possible, offering the same questions in the same time span to all students. The board contracts with outside psychologists to review the accommodations requests. Sometimes their conclusions differ from what parents think the student needs.
"There are some situations where affluent students may be borderline learning disabled,'' O'Reilly said, "and their parents are making sure their son or daughter has every advantage possible.''
This suggests that at least some rejections are related to the myth that kids are trying to "game'' the system by claiming to have learning disabilities. No one seems to have actual numbers, other than this: The College Board's approvals for accommodations have tripled since 1987. That's the number you hear bandied about.
And it's true. The percentage of students receiving accommodations has increased from half a percent to less than 2 percent. Considering that about 10 percent of the student population have diagnosed learning disabilities, the number receiving accommodations seems too low rather than too high.
It isn't about "the parents" when you think about it. College Board used to require that children be re-tested every three years (what were they thinking? That you "out grow" dyslexia? And given the resource constraints in public schools, that meant that parents were turning to private evaluators, and shelling out near $4,000 per evaluation -- to find out what you already knew about your child!) Now happily they have extended the requirement.
Here's the deal: let us posit a hypothetical high school junior, who (a) has a specific learning disablity (reading) with documentation extending back to first grade (b) in a college preparatory program in a public school (c) taking demanding classes (hoonors, but not Advanced Placement) (d) using time-and-a-half accomodations for quizzes, tests, and final exams (e) using a computer to take notes in class, and to write most if not all of her assignments (f) participating in two year-round sports (e) maintaining a 3.5 GPA ....what do you think her accomodations for the SAT should be?
I've talked to at least three parents I've heard from in the last few weeks--NOTHING.
No extra time. No computer to compensate for DOCUMENTED fine-motor disabilities (for those of you without LD kids, that means (a) it takes a huge amount of brain-power to form letters (b) the result is not terribly legible.)
Let me give you a metaphor one mom, whose child had been denied all accomodations (we don't know why) gave to me. "Look, my child requires certain technological assists to perform at a high level. We know that, because his grades rose from the 2.0 range to the 3.5+ range when we started using the accomodations. So? A kid with vision and hearing deficits can perform a high level because of his glasses and hearing aids. I don't recall reading that glasses and hearing aids are "accomodations". What the College Board has done is require my child to evaluated on his performance without his glasses and without his hearing aid." If they did that to a child with perceptable disabilities, they would never get away with it.
Another issue: kids with ADD or ADHD who take medication to help with their atttentional difficulties. That is an accomodation, is it not? I don't recall reading that the College Board is requiring urine screens for medication before allowing children to take the test.
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