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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

There is much less gatekeeping in our litigious society. Blind medical students do exist. All medical students have to practice on real people, and so someone has to be the one that has his invasive procedure done by the blind medical student who needs practice.

MADISON, Wis. — The young medical student was nervous as he slid the soft, thin tube down into the patient’s windpipe. It was a delicate maneuver — and he knew he had to get it right.
Tim Cordes leaned over the patient as his professor and a team of others closely monitored his every step. Carefully, he positioned the tube, waiting for the special signal that oxygen was flowing.
The anesthesia machine was set to emit musical tones to confirm the tube was in the trachea and carbon dioxide was present. Soon, Cordes heard the sounds. He double-checked with a stethoscope. All was OK. He had completed the intubation.
Several times over two weeks, Cordes performed this difficult task at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. His professor, Dr. George Arndt, marveled at his student’s skills.
“He was 100 percent,” the doctor says. “He did it better than the people who could see.”
Tim Cordes is blind.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7318398/ns/health-health_care/t/blind-medical-student-earns-md/#.Ww1vfhRllhA

[Anonymous]

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

The CB doesn’t decide. Ultimately the consumer does. That’s you. Many, but certainly not all colleges have chosen to rely on their tests. And the key word is chosen. So they have a market. SAT and ACT deal with accommodations differently. Sometimes the college prefers one over the other. If you don’t think the SAT or the ACT scores accurately reflect your kid's ability, you can apply to a test optional school. There are excellent ones. If enough great kids choose test optional schools, more schools will become test optional to get applicants and preserve their application numbers and their US News ranking. If kids stop taking college board and ACT tests, then the college board and ACT will either change of go out of business. Right now, their business model is working. When it no longer works, it will change.

The CB gets to make decisions because consumers say they do. If you don’t think the SAT accurately reflects your kids talents, do the ACT. If that doesn’t either, apply to test optional schools. If you think your kids scores are accurate, why do you are about other kids’ scores?

My DC has CB accommodations. And right now, we are looking at whether to use them, or apply to the ACT, and do it without accommodations or with, depending on their decision (I would suspect with, because we have very strong documentation going back years). If even with accommodations I do not think the test results are reflective of what my kid can do, he will apply to test optional schools.

You are not a victim here. Your kid has great college options without testing. And if they have good test scores, why do you care about my kid’s scores? If enough parents and enough colleges do not think CB is making good decisions on this, then the CB will change. Just like Adam Smith intended.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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?

There is much less gatekeeping in our litigious society. Blind medical students do exist. All medical students have to practice on real people, and so someone has to be the one that has his invasive procedure done by the blind medical student who needs practice.

MADISON, Wis. — The young medical student was nervous as he slid the soft, thin tube down into the patient’s windpipe. It was a delicate maneuver — and he knew he had to get it right.
Tim Cordes leaned over the patient as his professor and a team of others closely monitored his every step. Carefully, he positioned the tube, waiting for the special signal that oxygen was flowing.
The anesthesia machine was set to emit musical tones to confirm the tube was in the trachea and carbon dioxide was present. Soon, Cordes heard the sounds. He double-checked with a stethoscope. All was OK. He had completed the intubation.
Several times over two weeks, Cordes performed this difficult task at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. His professor, Dr. George Arndt, marveled at his student’s skills.
“He was 100 percent,” the doctor says. “He did it better than the people who could see.”
Tim Cordes is blind.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7318398/ns/health-health_care/t/blind-medical-student-earns-md/#.Ww1vfhRllhA

Thanks for sharing that, that's really interesting!

And I imagine that for him to pass the required exams to be a practicing doctor, and then to get hired as a practicing doctor, he would have to do so in a safe and effective manner. If he's that talented and technology is sufficient to support him in doing that, then good for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I'm sorry, there's really nothing you can do to convince me that 25% of students who have gained admission to highly selective SLACS have suddenly developed learning disabilities. It just does not make sense. I say this as a mother of a child with an actual IEP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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?

There is much less gatekeeping in our litigious society. Blind medical students do exist. All medical students have to practice on real people, and so someone has to be the one that has his invasive procedure done by the blind medical student who needs practice.

MADISON, Wis. — The young medical student was nervous as he slid the soft, thin tube down into the patient’s windpipe. It was a delicate maneuver — and he knew he had to get it right.
Tim Cordes leaned over the patient as his professor and a team of others closely monitored his every step. Carefully, he positioned the tube, waiting for the special signal that oxygen was flowing.
The anesthesia machine was set to emit musical tones to confirm the tube was in the trachea and carbon dioxide was present. Soon, Cordes heard the sounds. He double-checked with a stethoscope. All was OK. He had completed the intubation.
Several times over two weeks, Cordes performed this difficult task at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. His professor, Dr. George Arndt, marveled at his student’s skills.
“He was 100 percent,” the doctor says. “He did it better than the people who could see.”
Tim Cordes is blind.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7318398/ns/health-health_care/t/blind-medical-student-earns-md/#.Ww1vfhRllhA

Ummm ... I think I'd want informed consent that my intubation was being performed by a blind med student!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I'm sorry, there's really nothing you can do to convince me that 25% of students who have gained admission to highly selective SLACS have suddenly developed learning disabilities. It just does not make sense. I say this as a mother of a child with an actual IEP.

Hence the argument that there is a lot of wealthy people gaming the system. At my DCs private prep school where tuition is $50k plus, there are a LOT of accomodations - around 20%-25%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Shouldn’t that be the kid’s choice? Why is my kid unfairly discriminated against by not being given the option of taking extra time if he/she wanted to? Who are you to tell me that DC doesn’t want it? Why should only the wealthy be allowed to game the system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you use a calculator in your actuarial work? If so, why isn’t the solution that everyone gets to use a calculator on the exam (vs no one)?

Kinda like the shift from “handicapped-accessible” to “barrier-free” design.

I am the actuary. For math and science portions of the tests, if some kids get extended time plus calculator accomodations, I am saying that is truly unfair. All the kids should have access to calculators. It takes a lot of time and one is prone to mistakes when one does not use a calculator. And if the kid also does not have extended time accomodation, then the kid is the ‘disadvantaged’ kid. This is totally unfair especially in light of how many are gaming the system,

[Anonymous]

Wondered what you all make of this: It's an old story that was on 60 minutes several years ago. I never forgot it. Wondering if the kid attended law school or if his mother actually did:
http://articles.courant.com/1995-08-29/news/9508290152_1_elementary-school-teacher-reading-middle-school-student

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wondered what you all make of this: It's an old story that was on 60 minutes several years ago. I never forgot it. Wondering if the kid attended law school or if his mother actually did:
http://articles.courant.com/1995-08-29/news/9508290152_1_elementary-school-teacher-reading-middle-school-student

A reader is a reader, the student still had to do the work. There are tons of text to speech programs that help many students now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wondered what you all make of this: It's an old story that was on 60 minutes several years ago. I never forgot it. Wondering if the kid attended law school or if his mother actually did:
http://articles.courant.com/1995-08-29/news/9508290152_1_elementary-school-teacher-reading-middle-school-student

There's an interesting sentence from the above article which is dated 1995:-

"At Yale, about 40 of the university's 10,000 graduate and undergraduate students have been identified as having learning disabilities, said Fay Hanson, director of Yale's Resource Office on Disabilities."

40/10,000 = 0.4%, compared to the numbers of 20-25% at top universities today being quoted in the Wall St Journal article from 2018?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wondered what you all make of this: It's an old story that was on 60 minutes several years ago. I never forgot it. Wondering if the kid attended law school or if his mother actually did:
http://articles.courant.com/1995-08-29/news/9508290152_1_elementary-school-teacher-reading-middle-school-student

There's an interesting sentence from the above article which is dated 1995:-

"At Yale, about 40 of the university's 10,000 graduate and undergraduate students have been identified as having learning disabilities, said Fay Hanson, director of Yale's Resource Office on Disabilities."

40/10,000 = 0.4%, compared to the numbers of 20-25% at top universities today being quoted in the Wall St Journal article from 2018?

Because back then, if u had extended time or other accomodations like a calculator, the results were flagged. But once the flagging were removed and colleges did not know, the “need” for accomodations increased as people started gaming/cheating the system

[Anonymous]

There is no level playing field and never will be. My kid who tested at 65th percentile for processing speed, 60th for working memory, and 99.9th for both verbal and quantitative reasoning doesn’t get accomodations. Do you think his processing speed and working memory slow down his exceptional abilities? They most definitely do. He struggles to get Bs. He can’t finish any single section on the ACT within the time constraints, but when he has a 3.3 and a 28 on the ACT I am proud. Could he be the next Einstein if his 99.9s were across the board? Maybe, but everyone has imperfections and I don’t see him taking an extra minute to figure out a math problem accurately as a disability. It only concerns me when I consider the fact that he will always look less intelligent on paper than those who scored lower than he did and have accomodations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no level playing field and never will be. My kid who tested at 65th percentile for processing speed, 60th for working memory, and 99.9th for both verbal and quantitative reasoning doesn’t get accommodations. Do you think his processing speed and working memory slow down his exceptional abilities? They most definitely do. He struggles to get Bs. He can’t finish any single section on the ACT within the time constraints, but when he has a 3.3 and a 28 on the ACT I am proud. Could he be the next Einstein if his 99.9s were across the board? Maybe, but everyone has imperfections and I don’t see him taking an extra minute to figure out a math problem accurately as a disability. It only concerns me when I consider the fact that he will always look less intelligent on paper than those who scored lower than he did and have accommodations.

Seriously? At 60th and 65th your DC is well in the average range. Of course he doesn't qualify. He literally has not issue at all. Just saying, get some perspective. Try considering what school would be like for him if he was in the 99th percentile for verbal reasoning, 90th percentile for quantitative, but 5th percentile for processing speed. When not timed, he does better on testing than 99% of everyone else. But cannot get above a B in school to save his life. He definitely will blow people away in real life and absolutely deserves a chance to do that and if you all think that's "gaming" a system that makes no sense anyway, than too bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no level playing field and never will be. My kid who tested at 65th percentile for processing speed, 60th for working memory, and 99.9th for both verbal and quantitative reasoning doesn’t get accomodations. Do you think his processing speed and working memory slow down his exceptional abilities? They most definitely do. He struggles to get Bs. He can’t finish any single section on the ACT within the time constraints, but when he has a 3.3 and a 28 on the ACT I am proud. Could he be the next Einstein if his 99.9s were across the board? Maybe, but everyone has imperfections and I don’t see him taking an extra minute to figure out a math problem accurately as a disability. It only concerns me when I consider the fact that he will always look less intelligent on paper than those who scored lower than he did and have accomodations.

My dc's processing speed is in 37th% and they told me it's considered to be in the average range. And I think you need to stop blaming your son's poor performance on processing speed because my dc with 37th% processing speed, 52% working memory, scored in the 98th% on PSAT with no accommodations. Why don't you have him try SAT?