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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am an actuary. I would not be happy if the actuarial exams gave extra time to those who gamed the system. Why? Some exam are graded on a curve. I didn’t realize some of the accomodations included calculators. That is really unfair to those without extended time - a calculator with extended time means one would have lessor chance of making silly calculation mistakes.

Well, the precise argument people seem to be making is that their disability causes them to make "silly calculation mistakes," and therefore they should not be held accountable for them the same way other people are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a professor and a lot of what is going on is related to liability issues.

It used to be that a student would go to a professor and describe a situation and ask for an extension, etc. but now we are actually asked not to make those sorts of judgment calls, and frankly I wouldn't feel comfortable making them.

I'm not a doctor and I have no idea if your depression is debilitating enough for you to be given an extension, and it's not in my job description to make that call.

Therefore, I"m going to tell you that it has to be documented through disability services preferably before you start the course, etc. I don't want to be accused of favoritism or bias or anything else, so everything has to be a whole lot more legalistic than it used to be.

This is the nature of the litigious society that we live in.

But I do think there may also be an element of the student as consumer, I'm paying 60K so I want a boutique experience, etc. My daughter has some anxiety issues and I had no problem asking her psychologist for a note so that we could request a single rather than a room mate for her freshman year. Maybe 20 years ago people didn't do that, but today at that price, I want to give her every ability to succeed.

That said, there did seem to be a fairly large amount of upper middle class girls who gamed the system and got diagnosed with stress or depression so that they could have a cat -- at least at my son's big southern university.

This. There is a concept in higher education called Arbitrary and Capricious Grading. Policies around this issue are designed to ensure that every student is 1) graded for the same work on the same basis, including the application of all classroom policies, and 2) a professor does not show favoritism or retaliate against a student he or she doesn't like.

All the grades in a course could be called into question if a single student can prove arbitrary and capricious grading.

The basis of this is a series of lawsuits in the 80s and 90s, many of them against the University of California system that alleged unfair practices in higher education. What came out of these lawsuits was a determination that professors cannot, in fact, run a course exactly as they wish, but must have clearly expressed the requirements for the course, must grade consistently, and that the syllabus is actually a contract, and cannot be changed without reasonable notice (that is, if your Syllabus says your course will cover something, it must cover it, and if the Syllabus says the late policy is X, that policy must be followed for all students, etc., etc.). A lot of professors who never wrote very comprehensive syllabi (or sort of assigned things as the course progressed) hated these new rules. It also led to things like rubric-based grading.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

You ignored the second half of what I wrote. I don’t think speed should be what we’re testing in this context (just as I don’t think vision is what we should be testing on a reading exam). So I’d remove time pressure generally. But that’s a less profitable model ....

I think processing speed is a perfectly appropriate thing to measure for college admissions. I don't think it's the only thing that matters, but it is a legitimate metric of academic capability.

Not within these kind of parameters or wrt these kinds of tasks. In college, students can put in widely varying amounts of time on the same assignment. And what’s generally being tested isn’t speed but depth of knowledge and nuance (and/or ability to bring knowledge to bear in solving a problem or understanding a situation). Answering multiple choice questions quickly and accurately isn’t really a good measure of a student’s ability to do that kind of work.

Then give everyone the same “extended” time. You can’t argue this and then argue extended time is fair. It isn’t.

ITA — that’s why I said “remove time pressure generally” in my earlier post. I don’t think anyone is saying my kid needs more time than most people (regardless of how much time everyone else has). They’re saying my kid needs enough time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering that the benchmark rate of disabilities disgnosed in DC is supposed to be around 8.5%, 25% seems way too high!

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a2af8a0f14aa1cbbcf14079/t/5a733acf652dea8a7edb13f5/1517501136295/Corrected+Memorandum+Opinion+%26++Findings+of+Fact+and+Conclusions+of+Law%2C+dated+June+21%2C+2016.pdf

Self-selection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

If I didn't wear my glasses I'd be effectively blind (unable to read a board even from the front of a class, able to read only if the book or screen was an inch or two from my face). There is no "choice" to wear them or not. If I want to see, I need to wear my glasses. If a child with dyslexia wants to be able to demonstrate his understanding of the tested material, he needs the time (or other supports) to read the exam.

If I were required to spend 6 hours taking an exam because of "extra time for all!" instead of 4 hours, I'd be bored out of my skull, because I have the skills and abilities to take the exam in 4 hours. I'd also probably make stupid errors and change the answers to questions I was on the fence about, which is not an uncommon problem.

It's interesting that everyone seems to be focused on the math calculation portion of these exams. Yes, if you knew how to solve the problems and had all the time in the world, you might score better on that single area of the exam. That's one part of the exam. And odds are, if your child wasn't close to perfect on it already, extra time wouldn't have done much.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My DC had a reader and a scribe accommodation form the college board, it comes with 50% more time. This is because it takes longer to take a test with a reader and a scribe. There is a delay from when one person reads a questions and when the next person hears it. There is also a delay when the test taker tells the scribe the answer and the scribe bubbles it in, or in the case of the essay - when the scribe writes/types it out.

For those who only have 50% extra time, they are in a room with everyone less with that accommodation and they have to sit tight for the full time for each section just like in the classrooms where they have 100% of the time. That makes for a very long day.

For those of you proposing that everyone receives the extra 50%, would your DC’s be able to sit tight for that extra time, even if they did not need it in the first place?

Yes as they will be able to check their answers or do that extra question since they will have more time

Then the impact of extra time would be minimal in this case. So why advocate for it? A "normal" kid, checking answers doesn't yield much vs. a kid with ADHD who consistently makes careless errors and "needs" the extra time to check answers. I like the analogy of the glasses. If you give a kid with perfect eyesight glasses, they will end up with the same result as they would without the glasses.

No. The better analogy is allowing someone to take a vision test with glasses! The ability to do work quickly and correctly is what standardized tests measure (in part). Allowing someone extra time to "fix careless errors" defeats the entire purpose.

DP. I am allowed to take a vision test with glasses. At the DMV, because they want to make sure I can see well enough to drive.

The college board has determined that providing accommodations like extra time does not defeat the purpose of testing general knowledge and some speed.

The DMV has determined that me wearing glasses for my eye exam does not defeat the purpose of testing my ability to see the road and other information.

I'm not sure what the speed stuff is all about, to be honest. I had loads of leftover time for all my exams. Extra time would have afforded me absolutely nothing. I didn't get a perfect score on the SAT, and I wouldn't have with more time, because I didn't have all the knowledge I needed in order to get a perfect score. Perhaps people who can't finish in the allocated time should get tested, they might have a disability.

Or wait, you're not interested in sacrificing the extensive amount of money and time to get tested for something that's caused you no trouble at all? Huh. Maybe that partially explains the difference between you, and people who need accommodations.

My husband has perfect vision. Do you have any idea how much time and money he saves by his lucky genetics? It's maddening. And yet, the only accommodation I get is that I get to wear my glasses. Sure, maybe it's unfair that I get those cool microfiber wipes from my optometrists office. But if you don't need to hang out in an optometrists office regularly, I think it's ok if you have to buy your own microfiber wipes for your non-prescription sunglasses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

You ignored the second half of what I wrote. I don’t think speed should be what we’re testing in this context (just as I don’t think vision is what we should be testing on a reading exam). So I’d remove time pressure generally. But that’s a less profitable model ....

I think processing speed is a perfectly appropriate thing to measure for college admissions. I don't think it's the only thing that matters, but it is a legitimate metric of academic capability.

If the college board thought it was that important, they could include a subtest that measured it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I actually don't think the extra time accommodations are a problem. I think the problem is how many parents are raising young adults to believe they are incompetent and can't make their way in the world without special accommodations. It's so hard to start life thinking there is something this wrong with you.

Actually it is raising kids to think it is okay to cheat the system and that they are entitled to....

Why is it cheating? Sad that people thing this because they are upset their kids can't compete agains kids with special needs. And now they want extra time because they are so incompetent. Sad.

I think it's pretty clear that many of us don't think these kids actually have special needs at all. If 20-25% of the kids at a very selective school have this "need," it's more common than being left-handed or blond, and just about as deserving of special treatment.

I'm near sighted. It's really common to be near sighted. Using your "logic" I shouldn't be allowed to wear glasses, because there are enough of us that it's not deserving of special treatment.

Those of us who don't need extra time on tests and assignments, don't need note takers, don't need those accommodations aren't losing out on anything. Just like people who don't need to wear glasses aren't missing out on anything by not wearing glasses.

You're failing to engage with the premise, which is that there is NO sudden 5-fold growth of disabilities necessitating extra time on tests.

Because the premise is inaccurate. I'm also failing to engage with the premise that bricks fly, because it's as factual a claim.

The fact is that we know more about disabilities now than we did 5, 10, 20 years ago. We've seen rates of autism sky rocket. Is that a sudden growth in autism? Or is it a sudden growth in the ability to _identify_ autism? The same with dyslexia. 20 years ago, those kids were just stupid. 10 years ago, we could identify the most severe cases, and the other kids were just slow or lazy. Now we have a much better understanding (though still growing) and are starting to grasp how big a problem it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

You ignored the second half of what I wrote. I don’t think speed should be what we’re testing in this context (just as I don’t think vision is what we should be testing on a reading exam). So I’d remove time pressure generally. But that’s a less profitable model ....

I think processing speed is a perfectly appropriate thing to measure for college admissions. I don't think it's the only thing that matters, but it is a legitimate metric of academic capability.

Not within these kind of parameters or wrt these kinds of tasks. In college, students can put in widely varying amounts of time on the same assignment. And what’s generally being tested isn’t speed but depth of knowledge and nuance (and/or ability to bring knowledge to bear in solving a problem or understanding a situation). Answering multiple choice questions quickly and accurately isn’t really a good measure of a student’s ability to do that kind of work.

Then give everyone the same “extended” time. You can’t argue this and then argue extended time is fair. It isn’t.

Are you willing to sit in the room for 50% more time, even if you do not need it? For many people that would be another version of hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

You ignored the second half of what I wrote. I don’t think speed should be what we’re testing in this context (just as I don’t think vision is what we should be testing on a reading exam). So I’d remove time pressure generally. But that’s a less profitable model ....

I think processing speed is a perfectly appropriate thing to measure for college admissions. I don't think it's the only thing that matters, but it is a legitimate metric of academic capability.

Not within these kind of parameters or wrt these kinds of tasks. In college, students can put in widely varying amounts of time on the same assignment. And what’s generally being tested isn’t speed but depth of knowledge and nuance (and/or ability to bring knowledge to bear in solving a problem or understanding a situation). Answering multiple choice questions quickly and accurately isn’t really a good measure of a student’s ability to do that kind of work.

Well, then that's the college's choice. And as long as tests are timed, processing speed is absolutely relevant. Why else would there ever be timed tests? You may disagree that processing speed is important; but the rest of the world thinks it is.

Except accommodations in the form of extra time are allowed. If that blows the test, then colleges can stop using it in favor of some other metric. You may think that processing speed is the most critical part of this, but obviously the testers and colleges who use the tests don't agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering that the benchmark rate of disabilities disgnosed in DC is supposed to be around 8.5%, 25% seems way too high!

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a2af8a0f14aa1cbbcf14079/t/5a733acf652dea8a7edb13f5/1517501136295/Corrected+Memorandum+Opinion+%26++Findings+of+Fact+and+Conclusions+of+Law%2C+dated+June+21%2C+2016.pdf

That benchmark is heavily influenced by resource availability.

[Anonymous]

Just curious - do people get testing accommodations on the licensing exams like the NCLEX? I'm a RN, and that test was a computer adaptive exam - its different for all takers and quite difficult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an actuary. I would not be happy if the actuarial exams gave extra time to those who gamed the system. Why? Some exam are graded on a curve. I didn’t realize some of the accomodations included calculators. That is really unfair to those without extended time - a calculator with extended time means one would have lessor chance of making silly calculation mistakes.

Well, the precise argument people seem to be making is that their disability causes them to make "silly calculation mistakes," and therefore they should not be held accountable for them the same way other people are.

Do you think there's no gatekeeping in the fields of study that would deter students with particular disabilities from pursuing them? Take the example someone upthread talked about, how they wouldn't want a surgeon who needs double time in order to complete a surgery. Do you all really think someone is going to make it through med school if they have a disability which significantly affects a critical part of their work? How many blind surgeons do you know?

It is unlikely that someone with a disability that means they consistently make silly calculation mistakes would go into a field that required many basic calculations with no error checking. That person might go into a field that required them, if they had tools that could support it. My dyslexic child is probably not going to be a copy editor. But why should he be prevented from attending college because his dyslexia, without accommodations, means he couldn't appropriately demonstrate his knowledge on standardized tests?

[Anonymous]

Of course that begs the question of whether CB gets/should get to decide.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I’m another poster with wretched eye sight who thinks of accommodations as analogous to eyeglasses. That said, I think time-pressured standardized tests that don’t cover material as difficult as that presented in many high schools are a poor way of evaluating/ranking kids for college.

Er..it isn’t. You have a choice to wear them or not. What if you weren’t given a choice while others who gamed the system were? Would u be happy? Would u think it is fair?

You ignored the second half of what I wrote. I don’t think speed should be what we’re testing in this context (just as I don’t think vision is what we should be testing on a reading exam). So I’d remove time pressure generally. But that’s a less profitable model ....

I think processing speed is a perfectly appropriate thing to measure for college admissions. I don't think it's the only thing that matters, but it is a legitimate metric of academic capability.

Not within these kind of parameters or wrt these kinds of tasks. In college, students can put in widely varying amounts of time on the same assignment. And what’s generally being tested isn’t speed but depth of knowledge and nuance (and/or ability to bring knowledge to bear in solving a problem or understanding a situation). Answering multiple choice questions quickly and accurately isn’t really a good measure of a student’s ability to do that kind of work.

Then give everyone the same “extended” time. You can’t argue this and then argue extended time is fair. It isn’t.

Are you willing to sit in the room for 50% more time, even if you do not need it? For many people that would be another version of hell.

It’s already hell for me; I’m very fast. So have two rooms and let kids choose. That’s not the only option, but it’s an obvious one.