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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I felt sorry for the mentally challenged kids at first but after reading this it really is a lot of BS - thank goodness the best employers will require their own testing for entry. Good luck with that.

hahahahaha You're so funny. The best employers are hiring us because we perform better in the real world. Good luck with your SAT cramming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Low processing speed is a classic ADHD marker. And whether he gets NMSF or not is not call to make. And looking at the psychoeducational testing, and with TJ’s recommendation, the college board decided to go be him time and a half on the PSAT, SAT and APs. So he will take his extended time and be recognized as national merit commended or NMSF. And if you think ADHD kids working at a super high academic level at TJ have it easy, you are way off base. He has the aptitude to succeed at TJ, and he has the aptitude to succeed at any college in the country. And I could GAF whether you approve or not. Because it is not your call. Maybe you should worry less about my kid, and Focus on your own children.

Sorry, but if he's getting extended time he doesn't measure up. It will catch up with him when he can't compete without benefits.

My kid with graduate with a 4.2-4.3 from TJ. He will have used extended time for major math tests and major physics tests only. I don’t fully understand, but it has been explained to me that his mind moves faster in advanced math than he can process his thoughts and get them written down. It’s like his brain has one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. So he has to intentionally slow himself down in math or hiss brain is 3 steps ahead of his pencil, and he makes careless errors and takes shortcuts to keep up. Without extended time, he will get the mathematical concept right, but the answer wrong, because careless errors. And his scores on standardized math tests would not be an accurate reflection of his grasp of the material, or his actual aptitude.

History, English, writing assignments, bio, tech, science labs, tech labs— all done under the same time constraints as everyone else. All projects due under the same time constraints and with the same due dates. All schoolwork graded under the same standards. And all the extended time in the world on the SAT or APs would do him no good at all if he did not understand the underlying material. But he does, so he will be NMSF commended even if his score drops, and NMSF if it goes up at all.

Because he is 2e, we have always been thoughtful about his education. TJ has been a wonderful fit. He has worked with an EF coach while at TJ, and is ahead of many boys his age in terms of being able to organize and complete an enormous volume of work. And I strongly suspect her will attend a SLAC with a strong physical sciences program for college. And, like everyone else, he will choose a career path that plays to his strengths, which are many— reading, writing, grasping the “big picture”, having incredible artistic talent and doing interdisciplinary work, a particular area of science, and even math, as long as his career does not rely on a combo of mathematical accuracy and speed. For example, he is not looking at engineering.

And yet somehow this is not measuring up? Really? On what planet is top half of the class at TJ with impressive extracurriculars and, published research “not measuring up?

[Anonymous]

I want my child to be supported, but I am not focused on grades. If my child has poor working memory and processing speed, then he'll get low scores on standardized tests. And go into some other field of study that doesn't require that kind of testing.


I hear that, and definitely agree that a lot of testing is far from an actually productive method of measuring ability, but there are many situations (I'm about to take the praxis tests right now to become a teacher) where the test actually has little to do with the day to day experiences of that career field. Why would you want to preemptively limit your son's ability to enter certain careers before he can figure out if he'd actually be well suited to them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors. He scored 1580 on SAT. Love seeing that people are jealous about my kid’s accommodations, because all the years your “normal” kid bullied mine because he is different, you never knew he was going to blow your kid of the water with testing and college admissions.

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.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors. He scored 1580 on SAT. Love seeing that people are jealous about my kid’s accommodations, because all the years your “normal” kid bullied mine because he is different, you never knew he was going to blow your kid of the water with testing and college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors. He scored 1580 on SAT. Love seeing that people are jealous about my kid’s accommodations, because all the years your “normal” kid bullied mine because he is different, you never knew he was going to blow your kid of the water with testing and college admissions.

You are obviously threatened by the idea that your child's academic achievements are inflated by their your adept gaming of the system. But it's not about the competition.

For degrees to have any meaning or value, everyone must be held to the same standards. Giving some people extra time for dubious "disabilities" just undermines the credibility of everyone's degree. It also results in employers getting saddled with employees who have had their quirks indulged their entire lives, so they now lack the compensatory skills that they would have been forced to learn if they weren't constantly been given accommodations throughout their childhood and in college. If they can't complete the requirements for the degree, without being given extra time and privileges that other kids don't get, they shouldn't get the degree. They should major in something that is more suited to their wiring, or learn how to cope and overcome their challenges without forcing everyone to accommodate them.

If you really wanted to help your child, you would encourage them to learn how to either overcome or at least find honest ways to compensate for their challenges -- or find a vocation that is suitable for their abilities and personality. Artificially gaming the system so they get into "better" schools and qualify to scholarships that should have gone to other children or get jobs that they may not be suited for will only hurt them in the long-run, along with the less opportunistic children and families who got sidelined by your sharp elbows. But it seems that your motivation is being able to brag about your child's accomplishments rather than actually helping them grow.

[Anonymous]

Based on reading this, the only accommodation that people seem up in arms about is the extra time. For those of you who are against it, are you against for all students or is it that you feel that too many have been granted the accommodation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

And while we're at it, why don't we get rid of disabled parking, ramps, and other aids to disabled people. Let's go back to the good old days when those people were kept at the bottom of the pack, where they belong. Make America Fail Again.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors. He scored 1580 on SAT. Love seeing that people are jealous about my kid’s accommodations, because all the years your “normal” kid bullied mine because he is different, you never knew he was going to blow your kid of the water with testing and college admissions.

You are obviously threatened by the idea that your child's academic achievements are inflated by their your adept gaming of the system. But it's not about the competition.

For degrees to have any meaning or value, everyone must be held to the same standards. Giving some people extra time for dubious "disabilities" just undermines the credibility of everyone's degree. It also results in employers getting saddled with employees who have had their quirks indulged their entire lives, so they now lack the compensatory skills that they would have been forced to learn if they weren't constantly been given accommodations throughout their childhood and in college. If they can't complete the requirements for the degree, without being given extra time and privileges that other kids don't get, they shouldn't get the degree. They should major in something that is more suited to their wiring, or learn how to cope and overcome their challenges without forcing everyone to accommodate them.

If you really wanted to help your child, you would encourage them to learn how to either overcome or at least find honest ways to compensate for their challenges -- or find a vocation that is suitable for their abilities and personality. Artificially gaming the system so they get into "better" schools and qualify to scholarships that should have gone to other children or get jobs that they may not be suited for will only hurt them in the long-run, along with the less opportunistic children and families who got sidelined by your sharp elbows. But it seems that your motivation is being able to brag about your child's accomplishments rather than actually helping them grow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

YES!!!! It is called hyper focusing! My DS does it. He scored 36 on the ACT and didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work. Read it and weep people!!!

Do you realize that you just made the point of the naysayers? Your child "didn't really need the extra time. Used it to check his work." So your kid did great on the ACT because he was given extra time that he didn't really need. In other words, you gamed the system. You must be so proud.

Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors. He scored 1580 on SAT. Love seeing that people are jealous about my kid’s accommodations, because all the years your “normal” kid bullied mine because he is different, you never knew he was going to blow your kid of the water with testing and college admissions.

You are obviously threatened by the idea that your child's academic achievements are inflated by their your adept gaming of the system. But it's not about the competition.

For degrees to have any meaning or value, everyone must be held to the same standards. Giving some people extra time for dubious "disabilities" just undermines the credibility of everyone's degree. It also results in employers getting saddled with employees who have had their quirks indulged their entire lives, so they now lack the compensatory skills that they would have been forced to learn if they weren't constantly been given accommodations throughout their childhood and in college. If they can't complete the requirements for the degree, without being given extra time and privileges that other kids don't get, they shouldn't get the degree. They should major in something that is more suited to their wiring, or learn how to cope and overcome their challenges without forcing everyone to accommodate them.

If you really wanted to help your child, you would encourage them to learn how to either overcome or at least find honest ways to compensate for their challenges -- or find a vocation that is suitable for their abilities and personality. Artificially gaming the system so they get into "better" schools and qualify to scholarships that should have gone to other children or get jobs that they may not be suited for will only hurt them in the long-run, along with the less opportunistic children and families who got sidelined by your sharp elbows. But it seems that your motivation is being able to brag about your child's accomplishments rather than actually helping them grow.

And while we're at it, why don't we get rid of disabled parking, ramps, and other aids to disabled people. Let's go back to the good old days when those people were kept at the bottom of the pack, where they belong. Make America Fail Again.

[Anonymous]

Holding my kid back does not make your kid any better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors.

How is this different from any other kid?

[Anonymous]

Out of curiosity, how are all these scribes, readers, extra time supervisors, individual rooms etc paid for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lots of kids get through the work pretty quickly. Mine needs the extra time to check for careless errors.

How is this different from any other kid?

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on reading this, the only accommodation that people seem up in arms about is the extra time. For those of you who are against it, are you against for all students or is it that you feel that too many have been granted the accommodation?

Too many have been granted the accommodation and it is due to wealthy parents gaming the system. The kids who are cheating the system - they know they are gaming the system are getting higher scores that make them competitive for scholarships and better schools. Just level the playing field - give everyone the extra time. The extra time given can range from an extra 30 minutes to 2 hours...like previous poster said, if my kid can get the extra time to double check their work, they could score an 800 also.