WSJ article on more students especially the affluent get extra time on SAT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is another reason why we need the “adversity score” on the SAT.

This makes it worse for my child. Try being a white student on major financial aid in a college prep school. All the richies and URM's get the good colleges. No one wants smart white kids that need aid. Colleges need money or numbers to check off their list. If you aren't one, you are not getting in.

Mine got in to a top school and got aid. I couldn’t believe it either - but it’s a school that guarantees that it will meet 100 % of financial need.
Choose your school wisely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one should get extra time. It is just a scam for the wealthy to push their kids above the others.

In real life you don't get extra time.

at work, I give extra time all the time.

Where do you work? I don't know many professions where you just get extra time. I would be curious

I work for a big contracting firm doing IT project management... time, scope, cost...

time is often extended...

I would rather wait for the best engineer to give me his design then have somebody who I know has the same credentials but is not as good give me his. Of course the best engineers are a little ADHD, maybe Aspie and often OCD.

Often I have to say "good enough" and deal with them being not so happy because it is not perfect.. we don't waterfall we are agile so ...

I don't' care... I want the best design.

But there is value to being good AND fast. A test measures both -- not only whether you've acquired the knowledge, but whether you can work a problem/draft an answer quickly. However, if some are being given more time, and no one knows that, then a significant portion of the value of the value of the test is negated. I guess I wouldn't mind the extra time if it were noted on the results. That allows the schools (and employers) to make a decision re: whether it matters to them. Some might not care. For others, it could be a deal killer.

You clearly never worked with engineers/architects that design systems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD has multiple medical and learning disabilities including very slow processing speed, receptive and expressive language disorders and moderate hearing loss. She also has a high IQ and worked extremely hard in school to get a high GPA in honors an AP classes, but always had a 504 for extra time, because that was the single thing that leveled the playing field for her. I think everyone should Have extra time, but please don't assume that students who get the accommodation don't need/deserve it. If you observed how hard my DD works to keep pace, you would have a different view, I think. She used her extra time accommodations on ACT and SAT. Her good scores were consistent with her abilities and the school she chose has been a really good match, but she still has to work very hard, take a slightly smaller class load in order to keep up and manage her medical conditions. She receives accommodations at her university and is aiming for a profession that will be a good fit for her strengths. Accommodations for disabilities were made for students like my DD. I know that there have been abuses, but the remedy is not to question their use when fully warranted.

i mean kudos to your daughter for working hard, but how is this even possible? what does it mean to have a high IQ if your processing speed is very low?

you don't understand that going fast does not mean you are smart?

http://everyday-learning.org/fast-but-slow-processing-speed-and-the-gifted-child/

Of course going fast means that they are smart - very very smart. Sure, a cottage industry has popped up to support and label kids ‘gifted with slow processing speed’ , but that doesn’t mean that the actual smart people with fully working brains aren’t smart.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one should get extra time. It is just a scam for the wealthy to push their kids above the others.

In real life you don't get extra time.

at work, I give extra time all the time.

Good luck telling the DC Circuit that you need extra time for your brief because your associate has a 509 and is used to getting extra time.

I’ve worked with lawyers that go before circuit court judges and I have not met one that is prepared.... they never miss a happy hour though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They wont get extra time in real life.

Sure if you work st McDonald’s.

Most jobs don’t care if you spent 10 hours or 5 hours on a project as long as it is done by tomorrow morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They wont get extra time in real life.

Sure if you work st McDonald’s.

Most jobs don’t care if you spent 10 hours or 5 hours on a project as long as it is done by tomorrow morning.

At work there are multiple projects and they are all due yesterday. They need to get done - there is no leisure time to ponder unless you work for govt, non profit or billing by the hour. Even at biglât, they won’t you to be taking 10 hours to do the work when you can move on to the next client. No client wants to pay for 10 hours for work that should be done for 5 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD has multiple medical and learning disabilities including very slow processing speed, receptive and expressive language disorders and moderate hearing loss. She also has a high IQ and worked extremely hard in school to get a high GPA in honors an AP classes, but always had a 504 for extra time, because that was the single thing that leveled the playing field for her. I think everyone should Have extra time, but please don't assume that students who get the accommodation don't need/deserve it. If you observed how hard my DD works to keep pace, you would have a different view, I think. She used her extra time accommodations on ACT and SAT. Her good scores were consistent with her abilities and the school she chose has been a really good match, but she still has to work very hard, take a slightly smaller class load in order to keep up and manage her medical conditions. She receives accommodations at her university and is aiming for a profession that will be a good fit for her strengths. Accommodations for disabilities were made for students like my DD. I know that there have been abuses, but the remedy is not to question their use when fully warranted.

i mean kudos to your daughter for working hard, but how is this even possible? what does it mean to have a high IQ if your processing speed is very low?

you don't understand that going fast does not mean you are smart?

http://everyday-learning.org/fast-but-slow-processing-speed-and-the-gifted-child/

Of course going fast means that they are smart - very very smart. Sure, a cottage industry has popped up to support and label kids ‘gifted with slow processing speed’ , but that doesn’t mean that the actual smart people with fully working brains aren’t smart.

As a parent of a child with a gifted FSIQ while also having slightly below average processing speed and a learning disability I wholeheartedly agree. We are in an odd time where our kids’ cognitive profiles are being looked at piecemeal. But one index is just one index! Real life isn’t compartmentalized like that. Math requires every single intelligence index. So does practicing law. So does practicing medicine etc. is the full scale IQ the only number that matters? It weighs the other indices in a way to provide some kind of “one number” like average. But, no. Really it’s just one test at one time. It’s not a magic number. These tests aren’t great.

You know what these tests are great at? Helping professionals diagnose learning disabilities. That’s what these indices are good for.

My child has a learning disability. To say she’s as smart as kids with a higher IQ because she has a disability is preposterous! She is what she is. She should not be given accommodations on an IQ test. I’m not so sure she should on the SAT! So that she score higher? To show how she would score if she didn’t have this disability? She does! Real life doesn’t come with accommodations. I hear other parents claim they do. But, no, they don’t.

What we can provide for her is access to learning. We can help her learn. We can work around her deficits. Which she will have to learn how to do for the rest of her life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tidbits from article:

At Scarsdale High school north of NY city, one in five students is eligible for extra time or another accommodation such as a separate room for taking the SAT or ACT college entrance exam.
At Weston High School in CT, it is one in four.
At Newton North High School outside Boston, it’s one in three.

Public schools in wealthier areas: where no more than 10% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunches, an average of 4.2% of students have the 504 designation compared to only 1.6% of kids in public schools where 75% or more are eligible for free and reduced cost lunches.


The evidence there - the system is being gamed and tilted to those w extra time. Extra time for all.

Gamed? Pretty insensitive to kids with learning issues. I thought that you were going to talk about adversity scores and kids being under-diagnosed - that would have been a lot more fair.


If a kid is having some sort of trouble focusing, gets help and treatment and is granted extra time, that is not 'gaming' the system.

Did your detailed analysis uncover if all of these 'gaming' kids translated their extra time into higher scores or is this just another of the thousands of threads on this site where wealthy people are blamed for society's problems. In this case, that would involve being a parent and advocating for their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College Board can fix a lot of this ....
All scores get sent - they are either cancelled immediately with no visibility to score OR they are part of your record. No options for ... let me see.

Colleges can help -
no super scoring


I would love to see in the financial records for College Board.

Super scoring makes sense because you can have a bad day and get a low score, but you generally can't guess your way into a high score-- you actually need to know what you're doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The solution is to not give extra time period to any student.

Have students with challenges, write an essay how they are challenged and have schools conduct in-person interviews/assessments to verify the challenges and then they can take that into account when factoring in test scores.

But this processes should happen after the test is taken in normal conditions.

Do we lower the hoop in the nba to accommodate people who are vertically challenged?

This has to be the most stupid suggestion I've ever seen regarding the issue. You have no clue about children with learning disabilities. You aren't intelligent enough to realize how ridiculous your comparison of short nba players to students with learning disabilities is.

But your student with an LD doesn’t need to get an artificially high score on a timed test via extra time to prove their abilities then. That’s just wrong.

What should be done is the student should have to take the test TIMED and then they can take the test with accommodations and then both scores should be submitted. That would paint an accurate picture and it would be fair to everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this sounds crazy, but I don't see how extra time helps. I was smart and affluent and always finished early. I'm a fast reader and extra time wouldn't have helped me.

It does not help. This is very well documented. People want to believe it would help so they can blame kids with LD's for their kids low scores.

It isn't well documented. Stop making stuff up

give your kid the test timed, then untimed... compare the score.. your child is not going to magically become a genius with a few extra minutes.

I tried it. The scores were indeed much higher untimed.

So you gave a test in the time that was normally allowed for the test ( not just some overly short time), then gave unlimited time? If you give an unrealistically short time the first time around, then of course it will make a difference. The SAT and ACT are allotted the amount of time that an average kid can reasonably complete it.

[Anonymous]

Great....the dumb, slow kids game the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD has multiple medical and learning disabilities including very slow processing speed, receptive and expressive language disorders and moderate hearing loss. She also has a high IQ and worked extremely hard in school to get a high GPA in honors an AP classes, but always had a 504 for extra time, because that was the single thing that leveled the playing field for her. I think everyone should Have extra time, but please don't assume that students who get the accommodation don't need/deserve it. If you observed how hard my DD works to keep pace, you would have a different view, I think. She used her extra time accommodations on ACT and SAT. Her good scores were consistent with her abilities and the school she chose has been a really good match, but she still has to work very hard, take a slightly smaller class load in order to keep up and manage her medical conditions. She receives accommodations at her university and is aiming for a profession that will be a good fit for her strengths. Accommodations for disabilities were made for students like my DD. I know that there have been abuses, but the remedy is not to question their use when fully warranted.

i mean kudos to your daughter for working hard, but how is this even possible? what does it mean to have a high IQ if your processing speed is very low?

you don't understand that going fast does not mean you are smart?

http://everyday-learning.org/fast-but-slow-processing-speed-and-the-gifted-child/

Of course going fast means that they are smart - very very smart. Sure, a cottage industry has popped up to support and label kids ‘gifted with slow processing speed’ , but that doesn’t mean that the actual smart people with fully working brains aren’t smart.

As a parent of a child with a gifted FSIQ while also having slightly below average processing speed and a learning disability I wholeheartedly agree. We are in an odd time where our kids’ cognitive profiles are being looked at piecemeal. But one index is just one index! Real life isn’t compartmentalized like that. Math requires every single intelligence index. So does practicing law. So does practicing medicine etc. is the full scale IQ the only number that matters? It weighs the other indices in a way to provide some kind of “one number” like average. But, no. Really it’s just one test at one time. It’s not a magic number. These tests aren’t great.

You know what these tests are great at? Helping professionals diagnose learning disabilities. That’s what these indices are good for.

My child has a learning disability. To say she’s as smart as kids with a higher IQ because she has a disability is preposterous! She is what she is. She should not be given accommodations on an IQ test. I’m not so sure she should on the SAT! So that she score higher? To show how she would score if she didn’t have this disability? She does! Real life doesn’t come with accommodations. I hear other parents claim they do. But, no, they don’t.

What we can provide for her is access to learning. We can help her learn. We can work around her deficits. Which she will have to learn how to do for the rest of her life.

This. Very well written. You should be supporting the child that you have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is another reason why we need the “adversity score” on the SAT.

This makes it worse for my child. Try being a white student on major financial aid in a college prep school. All the richies and URM's get the good colleges. No one wants smart white kids that need aid. Colleges need money or numbers to check off their list. If you aren't one, you are not getting in.

Mine got in to a top school and got aid. I couldn’t believe it either - but it’s a school that guarantees that it will meet 100 % of financial need.
Choose your school wisely.

Mine too. I have a kid at HYP. We make 200K per year. Our all-in Cost of Attendance is 23K. White kid, non legacy, non athlete

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tidbits from article:

At Scarsdale High school north of NY city, one in five students is eligible for extra time or another accommodation such as a separate room for taking the SAT or ACT college entrance exam.
At Weston High School in CT, it is one in four.
At Newton North High School outside Boston, it’s one in three.

Public schools in wealthier areas: where no more than 10% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunches, an average of 4.2% of students have the 504 designation compared to only 1.6% of kids in public schools where 75% or more are eligible for free and reduced cost lunches.


The evidence there - the system is being gamed and tilted to those w extra time. Extra time for all.

Gamed? Pretty insensitive to kids with learning issues. I thought that you were going to talk about adversity scores and kids being under-diagnosed - that would have been a lot more fair.


If a kid is having some sort of trouble focusing, gets help and treatment and is granted extra time, that is not 'gaming' the system.

Did your detailed analysis uncover if all of these 'gaming' kids translated their extra time into higher scores or is this just another of the thousands of threads on this site where wealthy people are blamed for society's problems. In this case, that would involve being a parent and advocating for their kid.

It so gaming - none of the extra time is specific to the disability so kids who need accommodations either get too much or too little. With the data aka facts from College Board showing that scores jumped once accomodations were not disclosed, you don’t some gaming is going on?