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

[Anonymous]

Some students 100% need accommodations. Some do not not. 30% of our all girls private gets extra time for a variety of issues, the largest group being anxiety. Some of them have extreme anxiety some do not. Fast forward to how these kids do in college: a subset of them, not near the majority, scored significantly higher and got into more rigorous colleges than they could handle, colleges where most have over 1450 easily. Even with extra time in college, it does not help for classes that give 4 hours to everyone for a very difficult calc final that most finish in 90 minutes. 4 hrs or even more than 4 would not help them. But boy did it help them on the ACT and SAT and high school tests, so yes they had high school stats that were overinflated. That is not the majority of cases from where I sit (high school teacher with gifted ed and special ed training): most extra time is legit. It just stings when it is not or when it is exaggerated. Moving to zero time pressure tests, as many colleges have done, is the best solution for high school and SAT/ACT.

[Anonymous]

No one needs accommodations. Peoples children are extremely over medicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone earlier in the thread mentioned these kids with extra time taking ACT and getting high scores. Actually this is a thing. My ADHD did (diagnosed in 2nd grade) got extra time on the ACT and got a 36. My younger kid got a 35 on her second try. ACT is great when using extra time and especially multi day testing. Both got into top 20 schools. I know this is triggering to some of you, but I had to say it.

hooray you scammed the system. We knew it, you didn’t have to say it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some students 100% need accommodations. Some do not not. 30% of our all girls private gets extra time for a variety of issues, the largest group being anxiety. Some of them have extreme anxiety some do not. Fast forward to how these kids do in college: a subset of them, not near the majority, scored significantly higher and got into more rigorous colleges than they could handle, colleges where most have over 1450 easily. Even with extra time in college, it does not help for classes that give 4 hours to everyone for a very difficult calc final that most finish in 90 minutes. 4 hrs or even more than 4 would not help them. But boy did it help them on the ACT and SAT and high school tests, so yes they had high school stats that were overinflated. That is not the majority of cases from where I sit (high school teacher with gifted ed and special ed training): most extra time is legit. It just stings when it is not or when it is exaggerated. Moving to zero time pressure tests, as many colleges have done, is the best solution for high school and SAT/ACT.

Extra time for “anxiety” is a total scam. The actual therapy for anxiety is esposure, not avoidance.

[Anonymous]

For equity give all kids an extra 30 minutes.

The students that need extra time to complete the task probably need to be at community colleges.

[Anonymous]

The students with anxiety should probably consider trade schools if they can't function in standard college classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some students 100% need accommodations. Some do not not. 30% of our all girls private gets extra time for a variety of issues, the largest group being anxiety. Some of them have extreme anxiety some do not. Fast forward to how these kids do in college: a subset of them, not near the majority, scored significantly higher and got into more rigorous colleges than they could handle, colleges where most have over 1450 easily. Even with extra time in college, it does not help for classes that give 4 hours to everyone for a very difficult calc final that most finish in 90 minutes. 4 hrs or even more than 4 would not help them. But boy did it help them on the ACT and SAT and high school tests, so yes they had high school stats that were overinflated. That is not the majority of cases from where I sit (high school teacher with gifted ed and special ed training): most extra time is legit. It just stings when it is not or when it is exaggerated. Moving to zero time pressure tests, as many colleges have done, is the best solution for high school and SAT/ACT.

Extra time for “anxiety” is a total scam. The actual therapy for anxiety is esposure, not avoidance.

There were so many girls who got extra time for anxiety, beginning in 11th grade at our all-girls private. My daughter knows about a half dozen. It's the biggest scam of all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some students 100% need accommodations. Some do not not. 30% of our all girls private gets extra time for a variety of issues, the largest group being anxiety. Some of them have extreme anxiety some do not. Fast forward to how these kids do in college: a subset of them, not near the majority, scored significantly higher and got into more rigorous colleges than they could handle, colleges where most have over 1450 easily. Even with extra time in college, it does not help for classes that give 4 hours to everyone for a very difficult calc final that most finish in 90 minutes. 4 hrs or even more than 4 would not help them. But boy did it help them on the ACT and SAT and high school tests, so yes they had high school stats that were overinflated. That is not the majority of cases from where I sit (high school teacher with gifted ed and special ed training): most extra time is legit. It just stings when it is not or when it is exaggerated. Moving to zero time pressure tests, as many colleges have done, is the best solution for high school and SAT/ACT.

Extra time for “anxiety” is a total scam. The actual therapy for anxiety is esposure, not avoidance.

+1 truth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Really? My kid with ADHD got 1030 on the PSAT with a 504. Is this a score of a scam??

Our friend’s son got a 1550 with extra time and the kid was thrilled, as was the mom. She directly said it was a boatload of work for the accommodations and now that they got them, the kid stopped all meds and all therapy. Kid posted about it on Instagram. So just bc your kid didn’t benefit from it, doesn’t mean others don’t and 100% people scam the system.

Do you even hear yourself?

"Load kids up on drugs and therapy, instead of of giving them... a few minutes to think".

Really??!!

DP.

I think the drugs and the therapy was part of the scam.
They had to do it to make the diagnosis look real.

This. I am that poster. The mom - a physician - said, “don’t hate the player.” She said she know they have cracked down after Operation University Blues. The day the SAT results were released, she texted and said they can drop the “charade.”

So, no one was thinking it was extra time OR drugs. It was do what is necessary to get extra time (drugs, therapy) and then drop the charade. The kid also posted on Instagram the day after the SAT results came out and said he doesn’t have ADHD after all and is now med free. I saw the post.

There were several families in the Varsity Blues cohort that faked the process for recruited athletes. The logic that many are applying in this thread is that all recruited athletes must be cheats since there are some bad apples who faked their records with a corrupt consultant who went to jail. It is nuts.

You are all focused on the wrong problem. We need to fix the process for assessing learning disabilities in school. There are available tools to quantify and measure learning disabilities, but the only available path in our broken education system is expensive private testing. That is why there are economic disparities. Most families can't drop thousands of dollars for private testing. If schools handled this assessment process for all students, it would ensure adequate support in classrooms and reduce the risk for corrupt behaviors for securing accommodations.

No one on DCUM cares that an untold number of kids are slipping through the cracks. They are just angry and fearful that their own snowflake is potentially disadvantaged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Really? My kid with ADHD got 1030 on the PSAT with a 504. Is this a score of a scam??

Our friend’s son got a 1550 with extra time and the kid was thrilled, as was the mom. She directly said it was a boatload of work for the accommodations and now that they got them, the kid stopped all meds and all therapy. Kid posted about it on Instagram. So just bc your kid didn’t benefit from it, doesn’t mean others don’t and 100% people scam the system.

Do you even hear yourself?

"Load kids up on drugs and therapy, instead of of giving them... a few minutes to think".

Really??!!

DP.

I think the drugs and the therapy was part of the scam.
They had to do it to make the diagnosis look real.

This. I am that poster. The mom - a physician - said, “don’t hate the player.” She said she know they have cracked down after Operation University Blues. The day the SAT results were released, she texted and said they can drop the “charade.”

So, no one was thinking it was extra time OR drugs. It was do what is necessary to get extra time (drugs, therapy) and then drop the charade. The kid also posted on Instagram the day after the SAT results came out and said he doesn’t have ADHD after all and is now med free. I saw the post.

There were several families in the Varsity Blues cohort that faked the process for recruited athletes. The logic that many are applying in this thread is that all recruited athletes must be cheats since there are some bad apples who faked their records with a corrupt consultant who went to jail. It is nuts.

You are all focused on the wrong problem. We need to fix the process for assessing learning disabilities in school. There are available tools to quantify and measure learning disabilities, but the only available path in our broken education system is expensive private testing. That is why there are economic disparities. Most families can't drop thousands of dollars for private testing. If schools handled this assessment process for all students, it would ensure adequate support in classrooms and reduce the risk for corrupt behaviors for securing accommodations.

No one on DCUM cares that an untold number of kids are slipping through the cracks. They are just angry and fearful that their own snowflake is potentially disadvantaged.

This is 100% accurate. Our DD was sent for testing in 2nd grade because her teacher noticed that she was struggling and following behind. She was diagnosed with a visual disability, ADHD, and low processing speed. As testing has to be updated, we've spent almost 15K on testing over the years. It was not to scam the system, but to ensure our DD had a fair shake at getting an education. As her 2nd grade teacher said, it would be easy to write her off and pass her along as a nice little girl who was just a bit dull. Yes, she got extra time along with other accommodations, but it made a huge difference in her ability to succeed because her visual issue and processing speed meant she needed those few extra minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is very hard on all the students in such schools when so many kids get extra time on tests. Hard to figure out what is fair.

I'm still trying to figure out why it's fair to give some kids extra time and not all kids extra time.
If I am looking for the fastest runner and one runner is bad at reacting to the starting gun but is otherwise a very fast runner, so I time them based on when they leave the starting block.
Why wouldn't it be fair to just use THAT as the metric for ALL the runners if we don't want to measure the runner's ability to react to the starting gun?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one needs accommodations. Peoples children are extremely over medicated.

People with poor eyesight need glasses or guide dogs. People with poor hearing need hearing aids or ASL interpreters. People with wheelchairs need ramps. People with dyslexia need extra time to read. They are all accommodations. It’s about access - access to physical areas, access to communication, access to written material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Really? My kid with ADHD got 1030 on the PSAT with a 504. Is this a score of a scam??

Our friend’s son got a 1550 with extra time and the kid was thrilled, as was the mom. She directly said it was a boatload of work for the accommodations and now that they got them, the kid stopped all meds and all therapy. Kid posted about it on Instagram. So just bc your kid didn’t benefit from it, doesn’t mean others don’t and 100% people scam the system.

Do you even hear yourself?

"Load kids up on drugs and therapy, instead of of giving them... a few minutes to think".

Really??!!

DP.

I think the drugs and the therapy was part of the scam.
They had to do it to make the diagnosis look real.

This. I am that poster. The mom - a physician - said, “don’t hate the player.” She said she know they have cracked down after Operation University Blues. The day the SAT results were released, she texted and said they can drop the “charade.”

So, no one was thinking it was extra time OR drugs. It was do what is necessary to get extra time (drugs, therapy) and then drop the charade. The kid also posted on Instagram the day after the SAT results came out and said he doesn’t have ADHD after all and is now med free. I saw the post.

There were several families in the Varsity Blues cohort that faked the process for recruited athletes. The logic that many are applying in this thread is that all recruited athletes must be cheats since there are some bad apples who faked their records with a corrupt consultant who went to jail. It is nuts.

You are all focused on the wrong problem. We need to fix the process for assessing learning disabilities in school. There are available tools to quantify and measure learning disabilities, but the only available path in our broken education system is expensive private testing. That is why there are economic disparities. Most families can't drop thousands of dollars for private testing. If schools handled this assessment process for all students, it would ensure adequate support in classrooms and reduce the risk for corrupt behaviors for securing accommodations.

No one on DCUM cares that an untold number of kids are slipping through the cracks. They are just angry and fearful that their own snowflake is potentially disadvantaged.

This is 100% accurate. Our DD was sent for testing in 2nd grade because her teacher noticed that she was struggling and following behind. She was diagnosed with a visual disability, ADHD, and low processing speed. As testing has to be updated, we've spent almost 15K on testing over the years. It was not to scam the system, but to ensure our DD had a fair shake at getting an education. As her 2nd grade teacher said, it would be easy to write her off and pass her along as a nice little girl who was just a bit dull. Yes, she got extra time along with other accommodations, but it made a huge difference in her ability to succeed because her visual issue and processing speed meant she needed those few extra minutes.

Isn't this what we used to call a bit dull?

Is being slow a learning disability that we correct for now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Really? My kid with ADHD got 1030 on the PSAT with a 504. Is this a score of a scam??

Our friend’s son got a 1550 with extra time and the kid was thrilled, as was the mom. She directly said it was a boatload of work for the accommodations and now that they got them, the kid stopped all meds and all therapy. Kid posted about it on Instagram. So just bc your kid didn’t benefit from it, doesn’t mean others don’t and 100% people scam the system.

Do you even hear yourself?

"Load kids up on drugs and therapy, instead of of giving them... a few minutes to think".

Really??!!

DP.

I think the drugs and the therapy was part of the scam.
They had to do it to make the diagnosis look real.

This. I am that poster. The mom - a physician - said, “don’t hate the player.” She said she know they have cracked down after Operation University Blues. The day the SAT results were released, she texted and said they can drop the “charade.”

So, no one was thinking it was extra time OR drugs. It was do what is necessary to get extra time (drugs, therapy) and then drop the charade. The kid also posted on Instagram the day after the SAT results came out and said he doesn’t have ADHD after all and is now med free. I saw the post.

There were several families in the Varsity Blues cohort that faked the process for recruited athletes. The logic that many are applying in this thread is that all recruited athletes must be cheats since there are some bad apples who faked their records with a corrupt consultant who went to jail. It is nuts.

You are all focused on the wrong problem. We need to fix the process for assessing learning disabilities in school. There are available tools to quantify and measure learning disabilities, but the only available path in our broken education system is expensive private testing. That is why there are economic disparities. Most families can't drop thousands of dollars for private testing. If schools handled this assessment process for all students, it would ensure adequate support in classrooms and reduce the risk for corrupt behaviors for securing accommodations.

No one on DCUM cares that an untold number of kids are slipping through the cracks. They are just angry and fearful that their own snowflake is potentially disadvantaged.

This is 100% accurate. Our DD was sent for testing in 2nd grade because her teacher noticed that she was struggling and following behind. She was diagnosed with a visual disability, ADHD, and low processing speed. As testing has to be updated, we've spent almost 15K on testing over the years. It was not to scam the system, but to ensure our DD had a fair shake at getting an education. As her 2nd grade teacher said, it would be easy to write her off and pass her along as a nice little girl who was just a bit dull. Yes, she got extra time along with other accommodations, but it made a huge difference in her ability to succeed because her visual issue and processing speed meant she needed those few extra minutes.

This sounds like a legit case for testing accommodations.

Most are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Really? My kid with ADHD got 1030 on the PSAT with a 504. Is this a score of a scam??

Our friend’s son got a 1550 with extra time and the kid was thrilled, as was the mom. She directly said it was a boatload of work for the accommodations and now that they got them, the kid stopped all meds and all therapy. Kid posted about it on Instagram. So just bc your kid didn’t benefit from it, doesn’t mean others don’t and 100% people scam the system.

Do you even hear yourself?

"Load kids up on drugs and therapy, instead of of giving them... a few minutes to think".

Really??!!

DP.

I think the drugs and the therapy was part of the scam.
They had to do it to make the diagnosis look real.

This. I am that poster. The mom - a physician - said, “don’t hate the player.” She said she know they have cracked down after Operation University Blues. The day the SAT results were released, she texted and said they can drop the “charade.”

So, no one was thinking it was extra time OR drugs. It was do what is necessary to get extra time (drugs, therapy) and then drop the charade. The kid also posted on Instagram the day after the SAT results came out and said he doesn’t have ADHD after all and is now med free. I saw the post.

There were several families in the Varsity Blues cohort that faked the process for recruited athletes. The logic that many are applying in this thread is that all recruited athletes must be cheats since there are some bad apples who faked their records with a corrupt consultant who went to jail. It is nuts.

You are all focused on the wrong problem. We need to fix the process for assessing learning disabilities in school. There are available tools to quantify and measure learning disabilities, but the only available path in our broken education system is expensive private testing. That is why there are economic disparities. Most families can't drop thousands of dollars for private testing. If schools handled this assessment process for all students, it would ensure adequate support in classrooms and reduce the risk for corrupt behaviors for securing accommodations.

No one on DCUM cares that an untold number of kids are slipping through the cracks. They are just angry and fearful that their own snowflake is potentially disadvantaged.

This is 100% accurate. Our DD was sent for testing in 2nd grade because her teacher noticed that she was struggling and following behind. She was diagnosed with a visual disability, ADHD, and low processing speed. As testing has to be updated, we've spent almost 15K on testing over the years. It was not to scam the system, but to ensure our DD had a fair shake at getting an education. As her 2nd grade teacher said, it would be easy to write her off and pass her along as a nice little girl who was just a bit dull. Yes, she got extra time along with other accommodations, but it made a huge difference in her ability to succeed because her visual issue and processing speed meant she needed those few extra minutes.

This sounds like a legit case for testing accommodations.

Most are not.

Source? I’d love to see data on the percentage of accommodations that are scam vs legit. And who gets to decide?