Accommodation Nation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will no longer subscribe to the Atlantic or even add traffic to their site, but I can imagine what the rest of the article is like. You know what the solution is to this 'problem'? Give everyone extra time - it is ridiculous, particularly at the college level, to think one person is smarter or better educated or better prepared because it takes them less time to solve a problem or write an essay than the next person.

I would never want to hire anyone who has been given extra time to do assignments all their lives. That's just not the way the world works. But if you want your kid unprepared for real life, go for it.

And that's exactly why it's not disclosed, and you, as an employer, will never know who did or did not get extended time.

So are you saying they can actually manage deadlines suddenly when they start working? Why weren't they doing that before if they can actually do it?

It’s almost like 45 minute, timed, closed book exams don’t remotely reflect the vast majority of working environments.

They actually do because you need to think on your feet and may be called on at any time to speak in a meeting.

How many meeting-esque oral exams have you had in your academic career? I have multiple degrees and can honestly say zero.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I haven’t seen in all of this is a solution.

Give everyone the accommodation and take away the shitty time pressure?

It doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see a bunch of institutions saying that accommodations aren’t going to be applied to test-taking or contesting even the most obviously fake cases.

So what do we do? Every test is take-home, 24 hours, with word limits and access to the Internet and other students is built in to the test design?

I would build in an extra 30 minutes for everyone into every exam. Write a math exam that should take a typically prepared student 60 minutes to complete and give everyone 90 minutes and the extra time kids 90x1.5 or 90x2.

The grievance that private school kids have with the extra-time abusers is that they use their extra time to check their work. They do the test in 60 minutes and then spend the second 60 minutes checking all the problems. Allowing everyone to have 30 extra minutes would level this playing field.

Many teachers at schools that have 40% of the class with extra time do this. They don't make the exams tight time-wise but build in 15-30 minutes into every test so everyone has some extra time to check their answers.

Teachers don't want to be administering tests that only the extra time kids do well on. They see the games being played.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I haven’t seen in all of this is a solution.

Give everyone the accommodation and take away the shitty time pressure?

It doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see a bunch of institutions saying that accommodations aren’t going to be applied to test-taking or contesting even the most obviously fake cases.

So what do we do? Every test is take-home, 24 hours, with word limits and access to the Internet and other students is built in to the test design?

I would build in an extra 30 minutes for everyone into every exam. Write a math exam that should take a typically prepared student 60 minutes to complete and give everyone 90 minutes and the extra time kids 90x1.5 or 90x2.

The grievance that private school kids have with the extra-time abusers is that they use their extra time to check their work. They do the test in 60 minutes and then spend the second 60 minutes checking all the problems. Allowing everyone to have 30 extra minutes would level this playing field.

I don't know if this would work -- so long as it's a timed test, kids with registered disabilities will be entitled to 1.5 or 2.0 the time, or stop-the-clock breaks, etc. If non-disabled students are allowed to take up to two hours, disabled students will be entitled to three. Even if the test is written to take 60 minutes, I guarantee you that a couple of students will demand a full three hours. Facilities (and proctors) are stretched.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've seen this play out with 3 kids who went through a local top private school. The third is currently a senior.

The school is very rigorous: lots of homework, grade deflation.

The top 20% of the class doesn't have accommodations. They are really, really bright kids. They can keep up with the work, even when it gets more challenging and despite taking the most rigorous classes.

The kids beneath this start to struggle in high school, especially in 10th grade and up. They can't keep up with the top achievers, they start getting more B+s, they drown under the homework, they're not happy. Then BAM: The college admissions process starts and their parents have their first look at what their kid's college prospects are, given their grades. Panic ensues and these kids get taken to a psychologist for an evaluation and end up with extra time for "anxiety." And yes, they are genuinely anxious because they're way in over the heads at school and have parents who have unrealistic expectations. And COLLEGE STRESS LOOMS.

Some of this cohort will end up getting extra time with the College Board for the SAT, etc. Some will not. All will try.

However, in the end, the top 20% will get the Ivy spots and this next cohort will end up at schools in the next few deciles because ultimately, all this intervention in 10th or 11th grade is too little, too late.

I have seen this exact process happen with 3 kids over the span of 8 years. Probably a dozen kids each time.

I've seen this happen a lot too, especially in wealthy families, however I disagree that kids with accommodations are somehow outside of the top 20%. When you see Stanford reporting 38% with disabilities, you know a fair number of them had extra time on their tests and were awarded with admission to Stanford.

Yeah, the PP’s anecdote is off base. Ivy schools and top 10 schools, per the article, are reporting anywhere from 20-40% of their student body have accommodations for “disabilities” so obviously they are getting in

Students get those order to get AC or their own rooms once they are there. My son’s dorm mate wanted a single sophomore year and dad is a doctor…bingo.

What is the disability that gets a student into a single room? Social anxiety?

I don't know officially. But I have allergies/asthma and while I did not have a doctors note, I wrote on my housing form that my allergy demands would make me a PITA roommate and that they should spare anyone having to live with me and my hepa filter, humidifier, no carpet, and need to live in a fragrance free environment. I did not want to have to ask a roommate to use fragrance free shampoo, for example. So I requested a single, more for the sake of any potential roommate than myself. I knew I'd be annoying to live with. This informal request worked for me during undergrad, study abroad, and grad school housing selections.

I am thinking about this further. I did not have a doctor write a note, but I may have submitted medical records for my initial college housing application. My other concern was that I needed to be with someone who did not smoke or burn incense.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate learning about universal design. Love the idea of elegant unexpected fixes.

[Anonymous]

So the Atlantic story is strong on large numbers of anecdotes but they’re still anecdotes. Any chance we could get legit longitudinal data?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will no longer subscribe to the Atlantic or even add traffic to their site, but I can imagine what the rest of the article is like. You know what the solution is to this 'problem'? Give everyone extra time - it is ridiculous, particularly at the college level, to think one person is smarter or better educated or better prepared because it takes them less time to solve a problem or write an essay than the next person.

I would never want to hire anyone who has been given extra time to do assignments all their lives. That's just not the way the world works. But if you want your kid unprepared for real life, go for it.

And that's exactly why it's not disclosed, and you, as an employer, will never know who did or did not get extended time.

So are you saying they can actually manage deadlines suddenly when they start working? Why weren't they doing that before if they can actually do it?

It’s almost like 45 minute, timed, closed book exams don’t remotely reflect the vast majority of working environments.

They actually do because you need to think on your feet and may be called on at any time to speak in a meeting.

How many meeting-esque oral exams have you had in your academic career? I have multiple degrees and can honestly say zero.

Have you never been a decision maker? Many meetings will involve discussing disparate/novel ideas in real-time, offering counterpoints in real time, and making decisions in real time. All within the meeting, not "Hey, let's table this and let Jane mull it over for the next 48 hours."

There's also crisis situations that arise is all work environments, courtroom lawyers who have to make make objections in the moment, ER doctors, the White House press secretary thinking of some excuse for Trump's behavior on the fly. I can think of a hundred more career situations where quick thinking is more vital to being effective than perfect research/writing over a lengthy time period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I haven’t seen in all of this is a solution.

Give everyone the accommodation and take away the shitty time pressure?

It doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see a bunch of institutions saying that accommodations aren’t going to be applied to test-taking or contesting even the most obviously fake cases.

So what do we do? Every test is take-home, 24 hours, with word limits and access to the Internet and other students is built in to the test design?

I would build in an extra 30 minutes for everyone into every exam. Write a math exam that should take a typically prepared student 60 minutes to complete and give everyone 90 minutes and the extra time kids 90x1.5 or 90x2.

The grievance that private school kids have with the extra-time abusers is that they use their extra time to check their work. They do the test in 60 minutes and then spend the second 60 minutes checking all the problems. Allowing everyone to have 30 extra minutes would level this playing field.

Many teachers at schools that have 40% of the class with extra time do this. They don't make the exams tight time-wise but build in 15-30 minutes into every test so everyone has some extra time to check their answers.

Teachers don't want to be administering tests that only the extra time kids do well on. They see the games being played.

"Games being played"? Teachers who make time-rush tests are creating those games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will no longer subscribe to the Atlantic or even add traffic to their site, but I can imagine what the rest of the article is like. You know what the solution is to this 'problem'? Give everyone extra time - it is ridiculous, particularly at the college level, to think one person is smarter or better educated or better prepared because it takes them less time to solve a problem or write an essay than the next person.

I would never want to hire anyone who has been given extra time to do assignments all their lives. That's just not the way the world works. But if you want your kid unprepared for real life, go for it.

And that's exactly why it's not disclosed, and you, as an employer, will never know who did or did not get extended time.

So are you saying they can actually manage deadlines suddenly when they start working? Why weren't they doing that before if they can actually do it?

It’s almost like 45 minute, timed, closed book exams don’t remotely reflect the vast majority of working environments.

They actually do because you need to think on your feet and may be called on at any time to speak in a meeting.

How many meeting-esque oral exams have you had in your academic career? I have multiple degrees and can honestly say zero.

Have you never been a decision maker? Many meetings will involve discussing disparate/novel ideas in real-time, offering counterpoints in real time, and making decisions in real time. All within the meeting, not "Hey, let's table this and let Jane mull it over for the next 48 hours."

There's also crisis situations that arise is all work environments, courtroom lawyers who have to make make objections in the moment, ER doctors, the White House press secretary thinking of some excuse for Trump's behavior on the fly. I can think of a hundred more career situations where quick thinking is more vital to being effective than perfect research/writing over a lengthy time period.

I have plenty of meetings with decision makers. Those meetings are nothing remotely akin to a timed 45 minute test. If your desire is to test “thinking on your feet,” a multiple choice or written essay exam is a piss poor way of doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40% Stanford students have accommendations. This is not normal.

A good chunk of those are not academic accommodations, but are allergy/medical/physical accommodations. Like private rooms, ESAs, waivers allowing otherwise-banned appliances for medical needs, etc.

Still, you don't find it unusual that almost 1/2 the students at a large university have a disability?

No. I think it’s great that schools are finally making learning more accessible to people who are still intelligent and valuable despite having a chronic illness, limited mobility, dyslexia, or whatever else.

I guess you missed the whole point of the article, which is that the vast majority of these accommodations are for kids with ADHD or mood disorders, not learning disabilities, mobility issues, or chronic illness. And the accommodations are things like not having hard deadlines to accommodate ADHD (which makes no sense because my experience with ADHD is that the structure of hard deadlines is actually really helpful and flexible deadlines just encourage procrastination) or letting a kid with anxiety do all their classes via Zoom (which in no way helps that kid develop strategies for dealing with his anxiety and does not prepare him for the workplace or for life in general).

If we were actually still talking about making sure classrooms are accessible to kids in wheelchairs, everyone would agree with you. We aren't. We're talking about something different.

I work remotely on Zoom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will no longer subscribe to the Atlantic or even add traffic to their site, but I can imagine what the rest of the article is like. You know what the solution is to this 'problem'? Give everyone extra time - it is ridiculous, particularly at the college level, to think one person is smarter or better educated or better prepared because it takes them less time to solve a problem or write an essay than the next person.

I would never want to hire anyone who has been given extra time to do assignments all their lives. That's just not the way the world works. But if you want your kid unprepared for real life, go for it.

And that's exactly why it's not disclosed, and you, as an employer, will never know who did or did not get extended time.

So are you saying they can actually manage deadlines suddenly when they start working? Why weren't they doing that before if they can actually do it?

It’s almost like 45 minute, timed, closed book exams don’t remotely reflect the vast majority of working environments.

They actually do because you need to think on your feet and may be called on at any time to speak in a meeting.

How many meeting-esque oral exams have you had in your academic career? I have multiple degrees and can honestly say zero.

Have you never been a decision maker? Many meetings will involve discussing disparate/novel ideas in real-time, offering counterpoints in real time, and making decisions in real time. All within the meeting, not "Hey, let's table this and let Jane mull it over for the next 48 hours."

There's also crisis situations that arise is all work environments, courtroom lawyers who have to make make objections in the moment, ER doctors, the White House press secretary thinking of some excuse for Trump's behavior on the fly. I can think of a hundred more career situations where quick thinking is more vital to being effective than perfect research/writing over a lengthy time period.

I have plenty of meetings with decision makers. Those meetings are nothing remotely akin to a timed 45 minute test. If your desire is to test “thinking on your feet,” a multiple choice or written essay exam is a piss poor way of doing it.

NP, but you are displaying an astounding lack of critical thinking skills while being absurdly literal. I certainly wouldn’t trust you to make any important decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I haven’t seen in all of this is a solution.

Give everyone the accommodation and take away the shitty time pressure?

It doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see a bunch of institutions saying that accommodations aren’t going to be applied to test-taking or contesting even the most obviously fake cases.

So what do we do? Every test is take-home, 24 hours, with word limits and access to the Internet and other students is built in to the test design?

I would build in an extra 30 minutes for everyone into every exam. Write a math exam that should take a typically prepared student 60 minutes to complete and give everyone 90 minutes and the extra time kids 90x1.5 or 90x2.

The grievance that private school kids have with the extra-time abusers is that they use their extra time to check their work. They do the test in 60 minutes and then spend the second 60 minutes checking all the problems. Allowing everyone to have 30 extra minutes would level this playing field.

Many teachers at schools that have 40% of the class with extra time do this. They don't make the exams tight time-wise but build in 15-30 minutes into every test so everyone has some extra time to check their answers.

Teachers don't want to be administering tests that only the extra time kids do well on. They see the games being played.

"Games being played"? Teachers who make time-rush tests are creating those games.

Let’s just give everyone the rest of their lives to complete every test and assignment. Any limits whatsoever are discriminatory and useless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:40% Stanford students have accommendations. This is not normal.

It's cheating.

But the schools are in on it with the College Board.

College Board has gotten stringent with accomodations, and has made test changes to reduce time pressure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What I haven’t seen in all of this is a solution.

Give everyone the accommodation and take away the shitty time pressure?

It doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see a bunch of institutions saying that accommodations aren’t going to be applied to test-taking or contesting even the most obviously fake cases.

So what do we do? Every test is take-home, 24 hours, with word limits and access to the Internet and other students is built in to the test design?

I would build in an extra 30 minutes for everyone into every exam. Write a math exam that should take a typically prepared student 60 minutes to complete and give everyone 90 minutes and the extra time kids 90x1.5 or 90x2.

The grievance that private school kids have with the extra-time abusers is that they use their extra time to check their work. They do the test in 60 minutes and then spend the second 60 minutes checking all the problems. Allowing everyone to have 30 extra minutes would level this playing field.

Many teachers at schools that have 40% of the class with extra time do this. They don't make the exams tight time-wise but build in 15-30 minutes into every test so everyone has some extra time to check their answers.

Teachers don't want to be administering tests that only the extra time kids do well on. They see the games being played.

"Games being played"? Teachers who make time-rush tests are creating those games.

Let’s just give everyone the rest of their lives to complete every test and assignment. Any limits whatsoever are discriminatory and useless.

+1

Anxiety over taking a test. LOL !

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not fun or easy to schedule tests and plan around accommodations and the majority of students with accommodations are not getting extra time to test so much as extra time to cope with any number of stressors that other students have never experienced. I am sure someone out there is abusing the system but the majority of 504 students are not. And “giving everyone the extra time” is not fair to the kid with accommodations but many teachers do it.

Serious question: why do kids with low processing speed have a right to go to elite schools? Plenty of colleges out there…

Why do you incorrectly equate low processing speed with lack of intelligence? Elite universities want intellectual leaders, not those who can click through a multiple choice test the fastest.

Processing speed is a big part of IQ. Actually, you cannot have a very high IQ with low processing speed. Processing speed is super “g-loaded.” Nothing incorrect about that.

Wrong. There are people with very low processing speeds who have very high IQs. Some studies have found that up to 20% of gifted individuals may have slower processing speeds. Try reading some actual scientific literature--for example about neural efficiency, which suggests that highly intelligent individuals might actually use their brain resources more efficiently, resulting in what appears to be slower processing.

Cite me research that states processing speed is not g-loaded. Still waiting…

I don't know what you are trying to say, and I'm pretty sure you don't either, but here is an excerpt from an actual person's WISC score report for your perusal:

Subtest - Standard Score ("IQ") - Percentile

Fluid Reasoning - 151 - >99.9

Processing Speed - 95 - 37

Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) - 132 - 98


* Standard Scores are reported with a Mean of 100 and Standard Deviation of 15.