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

[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

I thought you said it was private school kids receiving accommodations. Private schools kids are typically in non-affluent school districts. Now you are saying it is affluent public school district kids. Which is it?

[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

I thought you said it was private school kids receiving accommodations. Private schools kids are typically in non-affluent school districts. Now you are saying it is affluent public school district kids. Which is it?

On what planet? MoCo is one of the most affluent school districts and 35% of the kids go to private schools. I’m sure that affluent Virginia and DC school districts are similar. This is not Oklahoma...

[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.

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."

Well, there are no stats for that but those complicated neuropsych exams are typically not covered by insurance and run $4000-$6000. If you are paying that —newsflash — you are affluent. Maybe you didn’t realize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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

This is true. Affluent parents want their kids to perform well at all times and they’re not going to wait for a kid to mature. Teachers are also a lot less tolerant of immature kids whether it’s normal or not - blame the teachers unions and their love of large class sizes.
If it’s any consolation these wealthy kids are on meds for life and that’s not necessarily a great thing in many ways.

[Anonymous]

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.

This reads as "give everyone extra time, but make the test need extra time" (by giving everyone some accommodations and making the test more rigorous). That doesn't help kids with disabilities. If you take a 2 hour test and give my dyslexic child 3 hours to take it, my child will do ok. But if you instead give everyone 3 hours, and make it a 3 hour test, my child is again at a disadvantage due to his dyslexia.

And are extra time and a calculator the only accommodations you want everyone to have access to? Is it time and a half, or double time? What about quiet rooms, a reader, a scribe?

[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.

Clearly people do care, note this thread.

The 20% at Pomona included students with mental health problems. Their interaction with the disability center could be as simple as a monthly check in to make sure everything's going ok, or a regular appointment at the mental health center.

How terrible, hmm?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Sorry, no, if you request accommodations you have to use those accommodations. You do not get to leave early. You get to sit there and wait. Just like kids do now if they get extra time.

Before you take the test, you can decide if you want to sit there for 4 hours or 8 hours, but if you choose 8 hours and you leave early, your exam is invalidated.

And you realize that now you've set up a system that will work just fine for smart kids who need some accommodations, but means average and below average kids with disabilities are now at a significant disadvantage. All because you want to make sure the super smart kid without a disability isn't disadvantaged by a super smart kid with a disability. (Which, seriously, try having a disability. It's not something someone would volunteer for just to get the perk of extra time.)

[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.

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.

And at affluent schools you're more likely to find redshirted kids. You're more likely to find kids who've been test prepped within an inch of their lives. You're more likely to find kids who have been supported and educated and prepared for everything to a high degree.

But it's the kids with disabilities you're choosing to target.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I'm waiting for evidence that the system is being abused.
And then I'll ask for evidence that the abuse is significant enough to justify a change.

And then I'll ask what OTHER systems being abused you're fighting against, or if it's just kids with disabilities who attract your attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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

Now show me that 33% of white boys are getting accommodations on the SAT and ACT. Then you can try to say that shows a link between over diagnosis of ADHD and accommodations on those tests.

[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.

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."

Well, there are no stats for that but those complicated neuropsych exams are typically not covered by insurance and run $4000-$6000. If you are paying that —newsflash — you are affluent. Maybe you didn’t realize.

Maybe you didn't realize that not everyone who qualifies for accommodations for the SAT and ACT has had to private pay for a neuropsych?

Here you go: https://www.collegeboard.org/students-with-disabilities/iep-504-eligibility

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sorry, no, if you request accommodations you have to use those accommodations. You do not get to leave early. You get to sit there and wait. Just like kids do now if they get extra time.

Before you take the test, you can decide if you want to sit there for 4 hours or 8 hours, but if you choose 8 hours and you leave early, your exam is invalidated.

And you realize that now you've set up a system that will work just fine for smart kids who need some accommodations, but means average and below average kids with disabilities are now at a significant disadvantage. All because you want to make sure the super smart kid without a disability isn't disadvantaged by a super smart kid with a disability. (Which, seriously, try having a disability. It's not something someone would volunteer for just to get the perk of extra time.)

Well that's unnecessarily strict. What are you trying to test for? And a system where everyone gets all the time up to 8 hours, that creates a new disadvantage for kids with disabilities how? Their situation is exactly the same as before! Do you mean because *gasp* other kids will get more time? Does that mean you are pitting the kids against each other? Aha. Truth comes out. Shouldn't it be level playing field and it's each kid showing what he can do without a time constraint?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

That’s not how the world works. Everyone doesn’t get a trophy. We are not all equal in every way. Deal with it.

[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.

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."

Well, there are no stats for that but those complicated neuropsych exams are typically not covered by insurance and run $4000-$6000. If you are paying that —newsflash — you are affluent. Maybe you didn’t realize.

Maybe you didn't realize that not everyone who qualifies for accommodations for the SAT and ACT has had to private pay for a neuropsych?

Here you go: https://www.collegeboard.org/students-with-disabilities/iep-504-eligibility

Exactly.

The problem with posters like the first one here is that many do not know what they are talking about. They get all worked up about something they think is shutting out the poor and just go full steam ahead. The truth is that many poor do have access to extra time. I think an earlier post included an article from the Chicago Tribune that talked about how the wealthy had more access admitted that in their research the found that, "At four schools with high poverty levels, 21 to 25 percent of the students got special assistance, but none scored at the national ACT average of 21, and many posted well below that."

I have a friend who a special needs daughter, now a junior in high school. In elementary school there was clearly a problem, and she was able to get her a 504 without spending a dime. She did not need to hire anyone outside the school system, which gave her the accommodations and support.

When it came time to apply for accommodations for the ACT, any documentation she supplied was strictly from the school and no psychologist outside of MCPS. She managed to secure extended time, use of a keyboard, mark booklet, and multi day testing. Yes, she may have had better supports in place in her public school if she had the advocacy of an outside psychologist, but her financial situation prevented her from doing so. She was, however, able to get the accommodations her daughter needed despite her lack of retaining an outside organization.

I agree the wealthy will always have a leg up in getting their kids what they need and more, but that is the case with everything, whether it be tutoring, membership in a club sport, private school, private college counselors, connections, etc. And yes, there is a very small percentage who might scam the system, but I do not think it is as prevalent as people are stating on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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."

Well, there are no stats for that but those complicated neuropsych exams are typically not covered by insurance and run $4000-$6000. If you are paying that —newsflash — you are affluent. Maybe you didn’t realize.

Maybe you didn't realize that not everyone who qualifies for accommodations for the SAT and ACT has had to private pay for a neuropsych?

Here you go: https://www.collegeboard.org/students-with-disabilities/iep-504-eligibility

Exactly.

The problem with posters like the first one here is that many do not know what they are talking about. They get all worked up about something they think is shutting out the poor and just go full steam ahead. The truth is that many poor do have access to extra time. I think an earlier post included an article from the Chicago Tribune that talked about how the wealthy had more access admitted that in their research the found that, "At four schools with high poverty levels, 21 to 25 percent of the students got special assistance, but none scored at the national ACT average of 21, and many posted well below that."

I have a friend who a special needs daughter, now a junior in high school. In elementary school there was clearly a problem, and she was able to get her a 504 without spending a dime. She did not need to hire anyone outside the school system, which gave her the accommodations and support.

When it came time to apply for accommodations for the ACT, any documentation she supplied was strictly from the school and no psychologist outside of MCPS. She managed to secure extended time, use of a keyboard, mark booklet, and multi day testing. Yes, she may have had better supports in place in her public school if she had the advocacy of an outside psychologist, but her financial situation prevented her from doing so. She was, however, able to get the accommodations her daughter needed despite her lack of retaining an outside organization.

I agree the wealthy will always have a leg up in getting their kids what they need and more, but that is the case with everything, whether it be tutoring, membership in a club sport, private school, private college counselors, connections, etc. And yes, there is a very small percentage who might scam the system, but I do not think it is as prevalent as people are stating on this thread.

Keep telling yourself that the poor are just fine if it makes you feel better, ok?
There’s a big difference between a kid with debilitating SN like autism or ID and a kid with a subtle disability.
A kid who can function socially and participate normally in the classroom would be passed through school with good grades in a lower income school, whether he could read or not . He’s not going to be identified as dyslexic or ADHD with neuropsych testing and get special tutoring and accommodations all of his life and go on to college after high school like your kid. He’s going to graduate, feel that he’s stupid and he’ll be in some kind of service job (serving your privileged family ) for the rest of his life if he is lucky. Make sure that you ‘strongly believe’ that a McDonald’s job is only a ‘gateway job’ that doesn’t warrant a decent wage because he’s supposed to work his way up to something better, ok? Icing on the cake!