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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

It isn’t 20% that get accommodations, the 20% number includes mental health services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

It isn’t 20% that get accommodations, the 20% number includes mental health services.

+1. College Board reports that 7% of test takers receive accommodations -- not 20%. And of course not all of the 7% are "highly privileged."

[Anonymous]

The responses from anti-accommodations posters is really disheartening. DCUM has reached a new low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We can go back and forth about individual cases but here is how I think about it on a systemic level. Let's take the example of a kid that scores in the 95 percentile in a bunch of metrics but the 20 percentile in one and thus qualifies as disabled.

There are some people who seem to think that this kid is really a 95 percentile kid with just some sort of issue preventing his ability from being truly recognized. That's not really accurate. Their kid is a kid with many strengths but also clear weaknesses.

it is unfair for the weaknesses to hamper the kid to such an extent that he is not able to display his strengths. So if he was getting a 30 percentile score on the test I would take that as evidence that the test did not truly reflect his ability.

Giving accommodations so that the kid ends up with a 95 percentile score is also not fair to all the other kids who also are hard working, who also want to go to good colleges, who also have their own strengths and weaknesses, because a 95 percentile score is ALSO not actually reflective of his abilities. Because his abilities are in fact limited, just like everyone else's, it's just they are limited in a way that we can better measure and try to address with novel learning techniques now that we know more about the human brain. But they still exist. The reality is this is probably a 70 percentile kid when all these factors are considered.

And then to get on the internet and brag about how your "gifted" kid smoked all the other kids is really both myopic and cruel. And if done on a mass scale will limit (and has limited) the enthusiasm of parents whose kids don't get extra time or a calculator but sure as shit could get higher scores with it to put up with the system you are trying to create.

Here is what you do not understand. An average kid without a documented disability who gets extra time will not significantly improve his or her score. That is because the average kid does not have the intellectual capacity to answer the questions correctly. People keep saying to give extra time across the board, but the truth is that you will be disappointed with your average kid's results. A kid with a documented disability like dyslexia or ADHD would improve their score significantly with the extra time because that is the biggest factor holding them back. Unlike your average, some of these kids are brilliant and are able to demonstrate that with the extended time. If you really want to improve your average kid's score, why don't you just get him some tutoring or have him do more practice tests on his own.

No one is talking about average kids. The debate topic is high performing students. Both high performing students with and WITHOUT disabilities score higher when given extra time. No one is talking about the kids who without any accommodations score 1000 on the SAT or an ACT score of 20. Students who are scoring in the 80th or 90th percentile rank are panicking because that's not good enough for top colleges. If you can score better than 90% of the population without any accommodations, is it fair to get extra time to score in the 98th percentile rank? You just aren't that disabled to begin with if are doing better than 9 out if 10 students. Affluent parents realize this and have increasingly shopped around for sympathetic psychologists. If a psychologist who has a business privately testing has a reputation of not recommending extra time and being conservative with a diagnosis, they aren't going to stay in business.

Agree - this is what the college board’s studies have shown - the distribution of scores after the flagging were removed did not follow a normal distribution.

I'd actually expect that. Wealthy kids are more likely to be identified because they have parents who can spend the time and money to do it.

If I were working two jobs to make ends meet, I might not have noticed how much my son was struggling. He was getting good grades, after all. When the school identified him as a lagging reader and did some tests, they said he just needed a little support, no problem. I was seeing things that concerned me, however, and had the time and money to pay for full testing. At that point his dyslexia was identified. And I was then able to push the school to give him real support, and not just "have him leave class a couple times a week to do guided reading with a small group" which is absolutely insufficient support for dyslexia. And I was able to make sure he had appropriate tutoring, summer programs, and the like.

That's a function of wealth and education. It's wrong - every child with dyslexia should be supported appropriately. They shouldn't have to wait until they're literally failing to get the school to realize there's an actual problem.

So what you get is a group of wealthy kids being overly represented. Not because they're scamming the system, but because they're the bellwether.

It's absolutely horrifying the lack of real evidence based instruction available for kids with dyslexia. We have been fortunate enough to be able to spend $18,000 outside of public school to supplement DS's education. Other families are able to spend $30,000+ a year to send their child to a school specifically focused on language based LD. We are all tax payers and the law requires a free and appropriate public education, but it's not happening for a lot of kids. It's not the fault of families with more resources that they're able to look elsewhere. It's the fault of school systems who are not meeting their obligation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

Nope. 7% is a nation-wide number. In affluent school districts it can be 20%. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-testing-accommodations-20120429-58-story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We can go back and forth about individual cases but here is how I think about it on a systemic level. Let's take the example of a kid that scores in the 95 percentile in a bunch of metrics but the 20 percentile in one and thus qualifies as disabled.

There are some people who seem to think that this kid is really a 95 percentile kid with just some sort of issue preventing his ability from being truly recognized. That's not really accurate. Their kid is a kid with many strengths but also clear weaknesses.

it is unfair for the weaknesses to hamper the kid to such an extent that he is not able to display his strengths. So if he was getting a 30 percentile score on the test I would take that as evidence that the test did not truly reflect his ability.

Giving accommodations so that the kid ends up with a 95 percentile score is also not fair to all the other kids who also are hard working, who also want to go to good colleges, who also have their own strengths and weaknesses, because a 95 percentile score is ALSO not actually reflective of his abilities. Because his abilities are in fact limited, just like everyone else's, it's just they are limited in a way that we can better measure and try to address with novel learning techniques now that we know more about the human brain. But they still exist. The reality is this is probably a 70 percentile kid when all these factors are considered.

And then to get on the internet and brag about how your "gifted" kid smoked all the other kids is really both myopic and cruel. And if done on a mass scale will limit (and has limited) the enthusiasm of parents whose kids don't get extra time or a calculator but sure as shit could get higher scores with it to put up with the system you are trying to create.

Here is what you do not understand. An average kid without a documented disability who gets extra time will not significantly improve his or her score. That is because the average kid does not have the intellectual capacity to answer the questions correctly. People keep saying to give extra time across the board, but the truth is that you will be disappointed with your average kid's results. A kid with a documented disability like dyslexia or ADHD would improve their score significantly with the extra time because that is the biggest factor holding them back. Unlike your average, some of these kids are brilliant and are able to demonstrate that with the extended time. If you really want to improve your average kid's score, why don't you just get him some tutoring or have him do more practice tests on his own.

No one is talking about average kids. The debate topic is high performing students. Both high performing students with and WITHOUT disabilities score higher when given extra time. No one is talking about the kids who without any accommodations score 1000 on the SAT or an ACT score of 20. Students who are scoring in the 80th or 90th percentile rank are panicking because that's not good enough for top colleges. If you can score better than 90% of the population without any accommodations, is it fair to get extra time to score in the 98th percentile rank? You just aren't that disabled to begin with if are doing better than 9 out if 10 students. Affluent parents realize this and have increasingly shopped around for sympathetic psychologists. If a psychologist who has a business privately testing has a reputation of not recommending extra time and being conservative with a diagnosis, they aren't going to stay in business.

I was a high performing student. Extra time would have bored me stiff. I got a perfect score on the ACT without extra time. I did not get a perfect score on the SAT, and while I was close, it wasn't lack of time that prevented it. I just wasn't smart enough.

I know it's hard for many of us to think that about our children. But honestly. If you have a high performing student who does not have a learning disability, they not only don't need extra time, they'd probably hate it. I have never taken a standardized test I didn't finish "early" and score extremely well on. Including the LSAT and GRE. Did so many of you really feel a time crunch?

I could understand people arguing that perfectly average children might benefit (a small amount) with extra time. But here's the thing. My dyslexic child doesn't just improve a bit with extra time. He goes from essentially failing to doing extremely well, because he's a bright kid. An average kid with dyslexia might go from essentially failing to doing around average. That's the point of accommodations, to allow the abilities of the children to show through.

Is it fair for children without disabilities to score in the 98th percentile? If your answer is yes, then your answer also needs to be yes that it is fair for children with disabilities to score in the 98th percentile.

Culturally, we're not willing to write these kids off as dumb anymore. Sorry that pains you.

As long as you ask, I got a 1600 on my PSAT but only a 1550 on the SAT because I ran out of time on one of the math sections.

With five extra minutes, I am pretty sure I would have gotten a perfect score or maybe a point or two off.

Virtually everyone I know, if offered more time on the SAT, would have taken it and would have seen their scores rise.

More context:

I feel strongly about this issue because I was a middle / upper-middle class kid with immigrant parents who did not have alumni status, donation money, sports or any other hook to an elite college. I did get into an elite college.

Straight A's and knocking the SAT out of the parent were the only way I was ever going to be able to pull that off.

I care about the fundamental integrity of the testing system so that as many whip-smart kids without connections or games can get into the best schools possible. I think that is the fairest system, and the best for them, and the best for society.

There are an extremely limited number of spots at these schools for kids without a "hook." It's terribly unfair in all sorts of ways. For many kids, an objective four hour test is the only way THEY are going to be able to level the playing field and now you are trying to take that away from them.

Many children with disabilities also have no hooks. Why should they be penalized by something that the ACT and SAT people have decided is worthy of accommodations? Why should they be represented ONLY by their disabilities and not their abilities? Why do you care less about their unhookedness than any other child's unhookedness?

I don't have any learning disabilities. I think it's unfair that when I was taking these tests back in the dark ages, my scores were compared to children with dyslexia who had no accommodations. Their test results were not representative of their abilities and it affected their ability to get into college ... for those few who actually pushed through and graduated from high school.

You want the playing field leveled only for your benefit. When we want to level the playing field, we need to consider all the players, don't we?

Yes. Which is why my suggestion was extra time and calculators for all students and make the test more intellectually rigorous to compensate.

That is idiotic. You just created the same scenario and wast time.

No. The claim is that these kids are super smart and they just need more time so they can show their true abilities.

Plenty of other kids would also appreciate more time to show their true abilities.

So make the test so that it can be completed by a smart kid in four hours, and then give everyone eight hours but they can leave when they want if they want to leave earlier.

THAT is fair.

It's the "same scenario" to you because it DOESN'T involve kids with a diagnosis getting a strategic advantage over those without.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

Nope. 7% is a nation-wide number. In affluent school districts it can be 20%. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-testing-accommodations-20120429-58-story.html

Oh yes .. find the outlier that justifies your rage at all those nefarious special needs kids. I would maybe give you something besides an eyeroll if the bigger problem weren't under-identification, lack of support, and lack of effective instruction all through school.

When Yale tested all kids in a sample school instead of doing only referral based testing, they found about 20% of kids have dyslexia. This is just one disability. Even allowing for overlap of populations (some kids have dyslexia, ASD, and ADHD) and the fact that not all kids take the ACT and SAT, the bigger issue is that only 7% of test takers receive accommodations for disabilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

Nope. 7% is a nation-wide number. In affluent school districts it can be 20%. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-testing-accommodations-20120429-58-story.html

Oh yes .. find the outlier that justifies your rage at all those nefarious special needs kids. I would maybe give you something besides an eyeroll if the bigger problem weren't under-identification, lack of support, and lack of effective instruction all through school.

When Yale tested all kids in a sample school instead of doing only referral based testing, they found about 20% of kids have dyslexia. This is just one disability. Even allowing for overlap of populations (some kids have dyslexia, ASD, and ADHD) and the fact that not all kids take the ACT and SAT, the bigger issue is that only 7% of test takers receive accommodations for disabilities.

Don't be willfully obtuse. That 7% is inevitably going to be highly concentrated at affluent schools. That Chicago district with 20% is not going to be an outlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

Nope. 7% is a nation-wide number. In affluent school districts it can be 20%. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-testing-accommodations-20120429-58-story.html

Oh yes .. find the outlier that justifies your rage at all those nefarious special needs kids. I would maybe give you something besides an eyeroll if the bigger problem weren't under-identification, lack of support, and lack of effective instruction all through school.

When Yale tested all kids in a sample school instead of doing only referral based testing, they found about 20% of kids have dyslexia. This is just one disability. Even allowing for overlap of populations (some kids have dyslexia, ASD, and ADHD) and the fact that not all kids take the ACT and SAT, the bigger issue is that only 7% of test takers receive accommodations for disabilities.

Ok, you're right. 50% of wealthy children have learning disabilities. However will the 1% maintain their postion?!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:look, nobody is going to care about a handful of otherwise able dyslexic students who get acccomodations on exams and standardized tests. But when it starts to get to the point where 20% of highly privileged kids claim a disability ... that becomes an issue.

Now you're literally making stuff up to get hysterical about. No where near 20% of kids total receive accommodations on the SAT, ACT, etc.

Nope. 7% is a nation-wide number. In affluent school districts it can be 20%. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-testing-accommodations-20120429-58-story.html

Oh yes .. find the outlier that justifies your rage at all those nefarious special needs kids. I would maybe give you something besides an eyeroll if the bigger problem weren't under-identification, lack of support, and lack of effective instruction all through school.

When Yale tested all kids in a sample school instead of doing only referral based testing, they found about 20% of kids have dyslexia. This is just one disability. Even allowing for overlap of populations (some kids have dyslexia, ASD, and ADHD) and the fact that not all kids take the ACT and SAT, the bigger issue is that only 7% of test takers receive accommodations for disabilities.

Ok, you're right. 50% of wealthy children have learning disabilities. However will the 1% maintain their postion?!!

This is what the argument has been about - the 1% are abusing the accomodations to gain an advantage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The responses from anti-accommodations posters is really disheartening. DCUM has reached a new low.

Have you read the thread? We are not anti-accomodation. We are pointing out how certain groups are abusing the system, we are advocating for extended time and calculators for ALL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We can go back and forth about individual cases but here is how I think about it on a systemic level. Let's take the example of a kid that scores in the 95 percentile in a bunch of metrics but the 20 percentile in one and thus qualifies as disabled.

There are some people who seem to think that this kid is really a 95 percentile kid with just some sort of issue preventing his ability from being truly recognized. That's not really accurate. Their kid is a kid with many strengths but also clear weaknesses.

it is unfair for the weaknesses to hamper the kid to such an extent that he is not able to display his strengths. So if he was getting a 30 percentile score on the test I would take that as evidence that the test did not truly reflect his ability.

Giving accommodations so that the kid ends up with a 95 percentile score is also not fair to all the other kids who also are hard working, who also want to go to good colleges, who also have their own strengths and weaknesses, because a 95 percentile score is ALSO not actually reflective of his abilities. Because his abilities are in fact limited, just like everyone else's, it's just they are limited in a way that we can better measure and try to address with novel learning techniques now that we know more about the human brain. But they still exist. The reality is this is probably a 70 percentile kid when all these factors are considered.

And then to get on the internet and brag about how your "gifted" kid smoked all the other kids is really both myopic and cruel. And if done on a mass scale will limit (and has limited) the enthusiasm of parents whose kids don't get extra time or a calculator but sure as shit could get higher scores with it to put up with the system you are trying to create.

Here is what you do not understand. An average kid without a documented disability who gets extra time will not significantly improve his or her score. That is because the average kid does not have the intellectual capacity to answer the questions correctly. People keep saying to give extra time across the board, but the truth is that you will be disappointed with your average kid's results. A kid with a documented disability like dyslexia or ADHD would improve their score significantly with the extra time because that is the biggest factor holding them back. Unlike your average, some of these kids are brilliant and are able to demonstrate that with the extended time. If you really want to improve your average kid's score, why don't you just get him some tutoring or have him do more practice tests on his own.

No one is talking about average kids. The debate topic is high performing students. Both high performing students with and WITHOUT disabilities score higher when given extra time. No one is talking about the kids who without any accommodations score 1000 on the SAT or an ACT score of 20. Students who are scoring in the 80th or 90th percentile rank are panicking because that's not good enough for top colleges. If you can score better than 90% of the population without any accommodations, is it fair to get extra time to score in the 98th percentile rank? You just aren't that disabled to begin with if are doing better than 9 out if 10 students. Affluent parents realize this and have increasingly shopped around for sympathetic psychologists. If a psychologist who has a business privately testing has a reputation of not recommending extra time and being conservative with a diagnosis, they aren't going to stay in business.

Agree - this is what the college board’s studies have shown - the distribution of scores after the flagging were removed did not follow a normal distribution.

I'd actually expect that. Wealthy kids are more likely to be identified because they have parents who can spend the time and money to do it.

If I were working two jobs to make ends meet, I might not have noticed how much my son was struggling. He was getting good grades, after all. When the school identified him as a lagging reader and did some tests, they said he just needed a little support, no problem. I was seeing things that concerned me, however, and had the time and money to pay for full testing. At that point his dyslexia was identified. And I was then able to push the school to give him real support, and not just "have him leave class a couple times a week to do guided reading with a small group" which is absolutely insufficient support for dyslexia. And I was able to make sure he had appropriate tutoring, summer programs, and the like.

That's a function of wealth and education. It's wrong - every child with dyslexia should be supported appropriately. They shouldn't have to wait until they're literally failing to get the school to realize there's an actual problem.

So what you get is a group of wealthy kids being overly represented. Not because they're scamming the system, but because they're the bellwether.

Well said!!

Both of you obviously do not understand statistics and distribution models.

[Anonymous]

Because it was lost in the shuffle:

“For one, ADHD is overdiagnosed. Experts estimate that 5% is a realistic upper limit of children with the disorder, but in many areas of the country, as Watson found in Virginia, up to 33% of white boys are diagnosed with ADHD”


https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/is-adhd-overdiagnosed-and-overtreated-2017031611304

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
We can go back and forth about individual cases but here is how I think about it on a systemic level. Let's take the example of a kid that scores in the 95 percentile in a bunch of metrics but the 20 percentile in one and thus qualifies as disabled.

There are some people who seem to think that this kid is really a 95 percentile kid with just some sort of issue preventing his ability from being truly recognized. That's not really accurate. Their kid is a kid with many strengths but also clear weaknesses.

it is unfair for the weaknesses to hamper the kid to such an extent that he is not able to display his strengths. So if he was getting a 30 percentile score on the test I would take that as evidence that the test did not truly reflect his ability.

Giving accommodations so that the kid ends up with a 95 percentile score is also not fair to all the other kids who also are hard working, who also want to go to good colleges, who also have their own strengths and weaknesses, because a 95 percentile score is ALSO not actually reflective of his abilities. Because his abilities are in fact limited, just like everyone else's, it's just they are limited in a way that we can better measure and try to address with novel learning techniques now that we know more about the human brain. But they still exist. The reality is this is probably a 70 percentile kid when all these factors are considered.

And then to get on the internet and brag about how your "gifted" kid smoked all the other kids is really both myopic and cruel. And if done on a mass scale will limit (and has limited) the enthusiasm of parents whose kids don't get extra time or a calculator but sure as shit could get higher scores with it to put up with the system you are trying to create.

Here is what you do not understand. An average kid without a documented disability who gets extra time will not significantly improve his or her score. That is because the average kid does not have the intellectual capacity to answer the questions correctly. People keep saying to give extra time across the board, but the truth is that you will be disappointed with your average kid's results. A kid with a documented disability like dyslexia or ADHD would improve their score significantly with the extra time because that is the biggest factor holding them back. Unlike your average, some of these kids are brilliant and are able to demonstrate that with the extended time. If you really want to improve your average kid's score, why don't you just get him some tutoring or have him do more practice tests on his own.

No one is talking about average kids. The debate topic is high performing students. Both high performing students with and WITHOUT disabilities score higher when given extra time. No one is talking about the kids who without any accommodations score 1000 on the SAT or an ACT score of 20. Students who are scoring in the 80th or 90th percentile rank are panicking because that's not good enough for top colleges. If you can score better than 90% of the population without any accommodations, is it fair to get extra time to score in the 98th percentile rank? You just aren't that disabled to begin with if are doing better than 9 out if 10 students. Affluent parents realize this and have increasingly shopped around for sympathetic psychologists. If a psychologist who has a business privately testing has a reputation of not recommending extra time and being conservative with a diagnosis, they aren't going to stay in business.

Agree - this is what the college board’s studies have shown - the distribution of scores after the flagging were removed did not follow a normal distribution.

I'd actually expect that. Wealthy kids are more likely to be identified because they have parents who can spend the time and money to do it.

If I were working two jobs to make ends meet, I might not have noticed how much my son was struggling. He was getting good grades, after all. When the school identified him as a lagging reader and did some tests, they said he just needed a little support, no problem. I was seeing things that concerned me, however, and had the time and money to pay for full testing. At that point his dyslexia was identified. And I was then able to push the school to give him real support, and not just "have him leave class a couple times a week to do guided reading with a small group" which is absolutely insufficient support for dyslexia. And I was able to make sure he had appropriate tutoring, summer programs, and the like.

That's a function of wealth and education. It's wrong - every child with dyslexia should be supported appropriately. They shouldn't have to wait until they're literally failing to get the school to realize there's an actual problem.

So what you get is a group of wealthy kids being overly represented. Not because they're scamming the system, but because they're the bellwether.

This...1000 times