Extra time on tests
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Anonymous
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14:29 here again. I didn't receive extended time for the SAT or ACT, because as I mentioned, I didn't get evaluated until college (a professor who knew me very well recommended it). I didn't pursue getting extra time for the GRE because the process is lengthy and involves appeals, and I did all of this off of this on my own, without any parental help since my parents don't believe in learning disabilities (they however did pay for the evaluation, and realized since I took the initiative to do this on my own, I must know my academic needs better than them). This lack of belief in the handicap did affect my experience in high school and my high school grades, but that's ancient history now. I didn't have a whole lot of support on how to navigate the college board process, but friends who did it said it was a real pain. So I doubt what you are complaining about with the PSAT and SAT is really as rampant as you believe.
As far as functioning in the workplace and in life goes, it is a whole different story. My issue was never with writing papers, or doing project oriented goals, it was more with processing speed on a very specific type of task--an exam. I have never needed to work my brain in that fashion in real life--and I am great at verbal recall in interviews and the like. I think a lot of kids who struggle with LDs that are diagnosed late in their academic career--late junior high, high school, and college--who manage to succeed anyway have a lot of resilience. They are often hard workers, know how to advocate their needs, and have overcome the frustration that comes with feeling like your mind isn't fitting into the mold of other people's expectations. A lot of kids who breeze through school don't know how to handle the workplace, because it really is a whole different beast. I know a lot of kids who are A students who don't know how to network, can't work through something that doesn't come easily, and who can speedily answer questions on an exam but not think out of the box on more complex sorts of questions. Of course, there are kids who are great at school who have all these qualities as well, but the truth is the correlation between school performance and workplace performance is complicated. I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about how easy it is to get extended time, and people who have never struggled with LDs just don't really get it. |
Anonymous
| It's not easy at all, as a person who wasn't diagnosed until graduate school. Gifted range IQ, just compensated with other skills and when got to college, avoided courses that required very tight time-pressured writing. Fine on other exams, fine on papers (anything where i had overnight to do it was fine -- even one-day take-home essay tests). But if i had to crunch out 6 essays in a 2-hour period, i couldn't get more than a couple sentences out per question. Needless to say, would not choose a career where super quick writing was required. Thankfully, there aren't many. |
Anonymous
It is my business when my DC comes home and wonders why some kids, who act/appear/perform similarly to my DC, get extra time. One way or another, they know who the kids are that need extra time, and it's on me to explain why that's fair. |
Anonymous
"They have diagnosed learning disabilities. The details are private and none of our business. It must be hard for them to feel different." Do you need to know details about why kids with medical issues do not participate in PE? |
Anonymous
My DC looks normal. In fact she's quite the stylish dresser. No tics, no behavior issues, no speech issues. LDs, ADHD, dyslexia, processing issues, etc. tend to be neuro/psych issues that just aren't visible to the naked eye. Perhaps you and your DC need a bit of an education on this topic? There are quite a few famous people with LDs so perhaps you can research this and talk to your DC about them to show that they look like normal people and can in fact be quite successful. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
Fair enough. It was a genuine question on my DC's part, and in formulating my response, learning more about it was the reason behind this post. No offense intended to anyone in the LD community. |
Anonymous
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Yep, sometimes extra time is not given out fairly. Hopefully schools will always require a medical diagnosis justifying the need for extra time, but it is well-known that some evaluators dish out the ADHD diagnosis like candy, given the right kind of parental "pressure".
At the same time, some children will have no visible sign of their learning disorder and cause resentment among some parents while really needing the extra time. Which is a long way of saying, mind your own business. Signed, mother of an ADD kid who badly needs the extra time and even then cannot finish! |
Anonymous
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Worth restating:
"I would encourage the LD community not to be defensive in the face of those that question the standards of more time, but instead work them to ensure that the system isn't abused which will ultimately hurt children who really need the accommodation." |
Anonymous
But its not the "LD community" that's abusing the system, if in fact that's happening (which frankly I didn't see at my DDs school, or at least she didn't see it and she knew exactly who had extra time since they were all in the room with her). It's apparently non LD people abusing it. I don't know what each kids diagnosis or circumstance is and certainly am not going to report someone for not being disabled enough. |
Anonymous
| That's precisely what the poster said. Let's work together to ensure that the system is not abused for benefit of the LD kids. |
Anonymous
I guess I am not convinced that giving non-LD kids extra time is really a benefit or somehow disadvantages my LD kid. She needs extra time to get the work done. She has it. Non LD kids don't need the extra time and it's not clear that extra time is going to improve their performance relative to hers. I have one of each and my non-LD kid doesn't need extra time. He usually doesn't even need the time he has. Giving him extra time wouldn't increase his grade or his scores. The difference between their learning and testing styles is stark. I also think, based on my limited experience to be sure, that there is a perception of abuse by grumpy parents like to OP who feel like their kid may be disadvantaged but I am not sure there really is that much actual abuse. Our school had strict testing requirements and a process for receiving extra time or other accommodations. The College Board has really clamped down on it and denies more applications than in the past. Seems like there are typically more accusations/assumptions than facts in these types of discussions. |
Anonymous
| Do schools publish their accommodations policies in the school handbook? Parents of kids with disabilities need to know that information. |
Anonymous
| Schools don't have accommodations policies; it is federal law that they provide accommodations to diagnosed individuals! |
Anonymous
I am a previous poster, but not the original poster, who wrote about my DC's experience, wherein their teacher at a very top private suggested that they might visit with the school's learning specialist to see if extra-time accommodations were needed for their testing. My DC works -- as I did in back my school days -- very slowly through their exams, often having to read a question or the material more than once to fully absorb it. DC was a straight-A student, hovering at an A- when the teacher suggested this. Now perhaps the teacher, an expert in working with young adults, really did notice some signs of an LD, and perhaps I have also always functioned with an undiagnosed LD (I would not be surprised if this were true, because I work through things at a noticeably slower pace than most of my peers, including my "more intelligent" sibling). In any case, my DC did not pursue the option to meet with the in-school specialist, and be evaluated for the extra exam-time accommodation. It could be that the in-school specialist would have referred us to an outside psychologist for further evaluation, but that was not my impression of the process. If my DC had met with the learning specialist, though, then they might have been granted the additional exam-time. In our case -- at least -- DC would definitely have benefitted from the extra time because they rarely were able to complete the last 1-2 questions of an exam. With the extra time to complete the omitted questions, DC might have been an A student, instead of an A- student, in that class. That would likely have impacted the grades of the other students -- including her truly LD peers -- because they are graded on a curve. |