Wall Street Journal on rampant growth in percentage of college students with “disabilities”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/colleges-bend-the-rules-for-more-students-give-them-extra-help-1527154200

“At Pomona, 22% of students were considered disabled this year, up from 5% in 2014. Other elite schools have also seen a startling jump in disabilities, according to data from the federal government and from the schools. At Hampshire, Amherst and Smith colleges in Massachusetts and Yeshiva University in New York, one in five students are classified as disabled. At Oberlin College in Ohio, it is one in four. At Marlboro College in Vermont, it is one in three.”

I’m sorry, but this is disgraceful. It’s one thing if you are legally blind, but anxiety or ADHD should not be grounds for giving someone twice the time to take an exam. It’s unfair to the more humble students who are less inclined to take advantage of what should be reserved for people are are truly in-need.

makes sense give many, def not not all, of K, 3rd and 6th grade intakes at privates were for ADHD reasons and most were pushed into small liberal arts schools where they also wouldn't lose their way. pomona was up there, esp if you have the money to pay. it prices itself way up there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:



No, the SAT and ACT literally measure processing speed and working memory, in part. That is why they are *timed.* Your child may have many strengths, but processing speed is not one of them. It would be much better that he focuses on a college and major that does not prioritize processing speed metrics, than that he circumvent timed tests. That would be a better fit for him.

what college would that be exactly? Almost all colleges from whom a degree means something require one of these tests. As long as that remains the case, accommodations on these tests is necessary.

And meanwhile, scores on SAT and ACT are extremely poor predictors of success in college, but colleges largely don't ditch them because their standing and income is dependent upon students' SAT and ACT scores.

They are excellent predictors of grades. And coupled with a kids’ grades they show if a kid has learned a lot and gotten a good education.
Just because your kid can’t do well on the tests is not a valid reason to trash them.
The test should be telling you and your child that maybe he should pick exercise science as a major instead of engineering, say.
Great so my technical magnet child who is great at math and CS (but needs extra time on tests and projects), needs to study what? Drawing? Music? Dancing? Sorry, he is really bad in those areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps tests simply need to be redesigned so that having more time to take them doesn't provide anyone with an advantage.

I certainly had exams in law school which allowed a ridiculous amount of time to complete (6 hours) and take-home exams (24 hours). There wasn't really an advantage/disadvantage to having more time. If you don't need all the time, you turn it in early.

I totally agree. For law school, I think a mix of the two kids of exams are appropriate -- black letter, time-limited finals (because that reflects a certain sort of skill that lawyers need in certain kinds of practice); and longer papers/take-homes that reflect real-life conditions for other kinds of legal work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PS- I bet it kills you OP to know that my kid had a 216 selection index on his sophomore PSAT, taken in a small group setting with extended time. That would have qualified him as National Merit Commended Scholar. If he improves by about 3 questions this year, with accommodations, he will be a NMSF.

And you can suck it up. This kid is brilliant, and works harder than his very hard working peers for the same or lower grades.

Brilliant, but low processing speed. There's no way he should get NMSF. He can be recognized in other ways for his brilliance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"I REALLY disagree. That's catering to a child with ADHD, not helping them learn to be successful in the workplace. Barring jobs where pure, isolated genius compensates for everything else, nobody can escape some drudgery. If the only goal there is to assess the child's knowledge of the content -- find, then just giving them the 3 hardest question works. But that's FAR from setting them up to be a functional person."

Do you understand how much drudgery that ADHD student has to go through to learn all the material and answer the three hard questions compared to a student without ADHD?

They aren't a genius, they have to learn the material. The student without ADHD can focus for an hour or two and do the home work or study for the test. It takes the ADHD student much longer.

They are an expert at drudgery because everything they do has to be done through drudgery. They can't do anything any other way.

You don't need a job that relies on genius, you just need a job that isn't under some type of time crunch all the time and to put in the time required for you to get the job done like any salaried employee would.

Huh? No. That does not describe the ADHD people I know. The ADHD people I know do GREAT when they have time-crunches that require them to produce important things quickly. They do terribly when they have to do drudgery-type things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

Not the PP, but I have some guesses. ADA has been helpful and is responsible for the general trend since its inception. Also, one of the stats on which colleges are rated is the % of returning students after one year and graduation rates. This has fostered investigation into why students of the past failed and what could be done to support them in their academics promote higher graduation rates.

The sink or swim attitude is dying and that is a blessing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

Not the PP, but I have some guesses. ADA has been helpful and is responsible for the general trend since its inception. Also, one of the stats on which colleges are rated is the % of returning students after one year and graduation rates. This has fostered investigation into why students of the past failed and what could be done to support them in their academics promote higher graduation rates.

The sink or swim attitude is dying and that is a blessing.

There's approximately 0% chance that 25% of kids enrolled at Pomona are disabled under the ADA, or qualify for special education under IDEA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

I’m an epidemiologist not an educator. How should I know? But seriously, a few thoughts. First, people like me weren’t diagnosed in the 80’s and 90’s and earlier. If we were lucky we figured it out, and we had parents who were relentless cheerleaders and helpers to get us through. But it was brutal, demoralizing and humiliating for me every single day at school. A kid like me is now diagnosed in elementary school. So the percentage of dyslexics goes up in the population as a whole. Second, dyslexics who didn’t have supportive parents, of those who just were profoundly dyslexic, didn’t ever learn to read well and dropped out of school in highschool. There is now evidence based teaching for dyslexia that helps tremendously, and there is text to speech, speech to text, spell check, and audiobooks that make learning possible for even profound dyslexia. So those smart kids are now going to go to college rather than dropping out. The percentage of college kids with dyslexia goes up. It’s a really good thing!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

Not the PP, but I have some guesses. ADA has been helpful and is responsible for the general trend since its inception. Also, one of the stats on which colleges are rated is the % of returning students after one year and graduation rates. This has fostered investigation into why students of the past failed and what could be done to support them in their academics promote higher graduation rates.

The sink or swim attitude is dying and that is a blessing.

There's approximately 0% chance that 25% of kids enrolled at Pomona are disabled under the ADA, or qualify for special education under IDEA.

None qualify for IDEA as that ends with 12th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

I’m an epidemiologist not an educator. How should I know? But seriously, a few thoughts. First, people like me weren’t diagnosed in the 80’s and 90’s and earlier. If we were lucky we figured it out, and we had parents who were relentless cheerleaders and helpers to get us through. But it was brutal, demoralizing and humiliating for me every single day at school. A kid like me is now diagnosed in elementary school. So the percentage of dyslexics goes up in the population as a whole. Second, dyslexics who didn’t have supportive parents, of those who just were profoundly dyslexic, didn’t ever learn to read well and dropped out of school in highschool. There is now evidence based teaching for dyslexia that helps tremendously, and there is text to speech, speech to text, spell check, and audiobooks that make learning possible for even profound dyslexia. So those smart kids are now going to go to college rather than dropping out. The percentage of college kids with dyslexia goes up. It’s a really good thing!

Amen! My DC is one such person with a rather profound version of dyslexia and currently attending college with many similar accommodations. I am grateful to those who paved the way before him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

I’m an epidemiologist not an educator. How should I know? But seriously, a few thoughts. First, people like me weren’t diagnosed in the 80’s and 90’s and earlier. If we were lucky we figured it out, and we had parents who were relentless cheerleaders and helpers to get us through. But it was brutal, demoralizing and humiliating for me every single day at school. A kid like me is now diagnosed in elementary school. So the percentage of dyslexics goes up in the population as a whole. Second, dyslexics who didn’t have supportive parents, of those who just were profoundly dyslexic, didn’t ever learn to read well and dropped out of school in highschool. There is now evidence based teaching for dyslexia that helps tremendously, and there is text to speech, speech to text, spell check, and audiobooks that make learning possible for even profound dyslexia. So those smart kids are now going to go to college rather than dropping out. The percentage of college kids with dyslexia goes up. It’s a really good thing!

Did someone say that dyslexia should not be diagnosed or treated?

The issue is not that these students have issues. The problem is that the current solution is to basically lower the bar in a way that is unfair to other students. I have no problem with people who have issues being treated for them. It is important that they are either treated or develop skills to workaround these issues. The real world does not give you extra time to complete tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

I’m an epidemiologist not an educator. How should I know? But seriously, a few thoughts. First, people like me weren’t diagnosed in the 80’s and 90’s and earlier. If we were lucky we figured it out, and we had parents who were relentless cheerleaders and helpers to get us through. But it was brutal, demoralizing and humiliating for me every single day at school. A kid like me is now diagnosed in elementary school. So the percentage of dyslexics goes up in the population as a whole. Second, dyslexics who didn’t have supportive parents, of those who just were profoundly dyslexic, didn’t ever learn to read well and dropped out of school in highschool. There is now evidence based teaching for dyslexia that helps tremendously, and there is text to speech, speech to text, spell check, and audiobooks that make learning possible for even profound dyslexia. So those smart kids are now going to go to college rather than dropping out. The percentage of college kids with dyslexia goes up. It’s a really good thing!

Did someone say that dyslexia should not be diagnosed or treated?

The issue is not that these students have issues. The problem is that the current solution is to basically lower the bar in a way that is unfair to other students. I have no problem with people who have issues being treated for them. It is important that they are either treated or develop skills to workaround these issues. The real world does not give you extra time to complete tests.

It is not lowering the bar. My DC has dyslexia and dysgraphia and has extended time, he also has reader and a scribe. When you take a test with a reader and a scribe it simply takes longer to complete. It has to go through two brains. If he has an electronic reader and keyboarding, it takes extra time for the technology to work together as it is clunkier than you would think it should be in 2018. He is not allowed to use word predictive software- which slows him down, but in the “real world”, he would have that predictive software. Technology is the leveling for him once he graduates, but testing in college still frequently uses old forms.

He has also had an accommodation of a 4 function calculator, because it takes him longer to recall simple math facts. Most people I know in the “real world” use calculators- so again, it is an accommodation for test taking only. He has an extraordinary math brain for advanced math, but for whatever reason he has a glitch in the basic multiplication tables. The brain is weird sometimes. He is a math major in college. After 3rd grade, he has not met a math class in which he did not excel. As a freshman in college, he was taking sophomore and junior level courses and still was at the top of his classes.

He is at a disadvantage without the accommodations. With the accommodations, it is closer to a level playing field.

In the “real world”, he will do fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

Why don’t you call them up and demand answers since it is apparently your personal business?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As the dyslexic mother of a dyslexic child, it is awful to read what you all think of kids with accommodations. My kid is so ashamed already by his accommodations that he often refuses to use them. He has an IQ of 130 but struggles to pass classes. When you have a kid like mine it becomes blindingly obvious that our educational system isn’t serving our kids well - the typical kids or mine. Why should all school work reward working memory and processing speed and ignore problem solving? It’s wacky. Just like I did, my kid is going to struggle to get through school, but will flourish in a career. And for the person wondering how those stupid dyslexics could have made it into Pomona...a characteristic of dyslexia is high intelligence and problem solving, but a different brain wiring that also makes reading difficult to learn and usually comes with working memory deficits. Many of us dyslexics make it to prestigious colleges by working twice as hard as everyone else. I did.

Then how do you explain the extraordinary increase at these competitive colleges such that 25% of students are labeled disabled?

I’m an epidemiologist not an educator. How should I know? But seriously, a few thoughts. First, people like me weren’t diagnosed in the 80’s and 90’s and earlier. If we were lucky we figured it out, and we had parents who were relentless cheerleaders and helpers to get us through. But it was brutal, demoralizing and humiliating for me every single day at school. A kid like me is now diagnosed in elementary school. So the percentage of dyslexics goes up in the population as a whole. Second, dyslexics who didn’t have supportive parents, of those who just were profoundly dyslexic, didn’t ever learn to read well and dropped out of school in highschool. There is now evidence based teaching for dyslexia that helps tremendously, and there is text to speech, speech to text, spell check, and audiobooks that make learning possible for even profound dyslexia. So those smart kids are now going to go to college rather than dropping out. The percentage of college kids with dyslexia goes up. It’s a really good thing!

Did someone say that dyslexia should not be diagnosed or treated?

The issue is not that these students have issues. The problem is that the current solution is to basically lower the bar in a way that is unfair to other students. I have no problem with people who have issues being treated for them. It is important that they are either treated or develop skills to workaround these issues. The real world does not give you extra time to complete tests.

It is not lowering the bar. My DC has dyslexia and dysgraphia and has extended time, he also has reader and a scribe. When you take a test with a reader and a scribe it simply takes longer to complete. It has to go through two brains. If he has an electronic reader and keyboarding, it takes extra time for the technology to work together as it is clunkier than you would think it should be in 2018. He is not allowed to use word predictive software- which slows him down, but in the “real world”, he would have that predictive software. Technology is the leveling for him once he graduates, but testing in college still frequently uses old forms.

He has also had an accommodation of a 4 function calculator, because it takes him longer to recall simple math facts. Most people I know in the “real world” use calculators- so again, it is an accommodation for test taking only. He has an extraordinary math brain for advanced math, but for whatever reason he has a glitch in the basic multiplication tables. The brain is weird sometimes. He is a math major in college. After 3rd grade, he has not met a math class in which he did not excel. As a freshman in college, he was taking sophomore and junior level courses and still was at the top of his classes.

He is at a disadvantage without the accommodations. With the accommodations, it is closer to a level playing field.

In the “real world”, he will do fine.

Especially if his ‘real world’ involves being a research based academic?