Atlantic article on college admissions

[Anonymous]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/what-college-admissions-scandal-reveals/586468/

Atlantic article nailed it on accommodations:
The second flaw in the system was an important change to the way untimed testing is reported to the colleges. When I began the job, the SAT and the ACT offered untimed testing to students with learning disabilities, provided that they had been diagnosed by a professional. However, an asterisk appeared next to untimed scores, alerting the college that the student had taken the test without a time limit. But during my time at the school, this asterisk was found to violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the testing companies dropped it. Suddenly it was possible for everyone with enough money to get a diagnosis that would grant their kid two full days—instead of four hours—to take the SAT, and the colleges would never know. Today, according to Slate, “in places like Greenwich, Conn., and certain zip codes of New York City and Los Angeles, the percentage of untimed test-taking is said to be close to 50 percent.” Taking a test under normal time limits in one of these neighborhoods is a sucker’s game—you’ve voluntarily handicapped yourself.

[Anonymous]

Is it still true that you can take an untimed test and the colleges will never know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/what-college-admissions-scandal-reveals/586468/

Atlantic article nailed it on accommodations:
The second flaw in the system was an important change to the way untimed testing is reported to the colleges. When I began the job, the SAT and the ACT offered untimed testing to students with learning disabilities, provided that they had been diagnosed by a professional. However, an asterisk appeared next to untimed scores, alerting the college that the student had taken the test without a time limit. But during my time at the school, this asterisk was found to violate the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the testing companies dropped it. Suddenly it was possible for everyone with enough money to get a diagnosis that would grant their kid two full days—instead of four hours—to take the SAT, and the colleges would never know. Today, according to Slate, “in places like Greenwich, Conn., and certain zip codes of New York City and Los Angeles, the percentage of untimed test-taking is said to be close to 50 percent.” Taking a test under normal time limits in one of these neighborhoods is a sucker’s game—you’ve voluntarily handicapped yourself.

No.

1) Even among students with accommodations, an untimed test is rare (and most susceptible to cheating). Most timing accommodations are time and a half; some get double time and a sliver get untimed (all of the Singer clients got untimed FWIW). Any student (save for those with a traumatic brain injury or other issue) with the faked diagnoses supposedly have ADHD. Untimed tests for ADHD are not needed in most cases.

2) Subject requests from 'high percentage areas' for extra time to higher scrutiny and a look back requirement to see what students grades and performance was before and after the 'diagnoses.' If no difference, then no accommodations (College Board denies thousands of students with disabilities extra time every year, saying there is no designated impact).

3) It does not matter that this writer thinks that the flag should be returned; it is against the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law. There are better ways to cut down on false diagnoses, and unneeded accommodations without hurting those who have legitimate disabilities and who were discriminated against in the old system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it still true that you can take an untimed test and the colleges will never know?

Colleges are not told if a student took a test with or without accommodations. But it can be discerned if the testing date did not align with one of the national dates.

[Anonymous]

The pulled quote was not the point of the article. The article is about entitled parents and the length they will go to to get their unqualified students into an elite college.

"...I just about got an ulcer sitting in that office listening to rich people complaining bitterly about an “unfair” or a “rigged” system. Sometimes they would say things so outlandish that I would just stare at them, trying to beam into their mind the question, Can you hear yourself? That so many of them were (literal) limousine liberals lent the meetings an element of radical chic. They were down for the revolution, but there was no way their kid was going to settle for Lehigh.

Some of the parents—especially, in those days, the fathers—were such powerful professionals, and I (as you recall) was so poor, obscure, plain, and little, that it was as if they were cracking open a cream puff with a panzer. This was before crying in the office was a thing, so I had to just sit there and take it. Then the admissions letters arrived from the colleges. If the kid got in, it’s because he was a genius; if he didn’t, it was because I screwed up. When a venture capitalist and his ageless wife storm into your boss’s office to get you fired because you failed to get their daughter (conscientious, but no atom splitter) into the prestigious school they wanted, you can really start to question whether it’s worth the 36K.

Sometimes, in anger and frustration, the parents would blame me for the poor return on investment they were getting on their years of tuition payments. At that point, I was living in a rent-controlled apartment and paying $198 a month on a Civic with manual windows. I was in no position to evaluate their financial strategies. Worst of all, the helpless kid would be sitting right there, shrinking into the couch cushions as his parents all but said that his entire secondary education had been a giant waste of money. The parents would simmer down a bit, and the four of us would stew in misery. Nobody wanted to hear me read “Ozymandias.” ..."

[Anonymous]

The Atlantic article references this Slate article from 2006:

The distortions worked on the SAT and other standardized tests are revealed in data winkled out of the College Board last year by Sam Abrams, a young researcher at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Nationwide, only 2 percent of students who have taken the SAT over the past 10 years have done so untimed. Most of these students’ diagnoses are presumably genuine. But in places like Greenwich, Conn., and certain zip codes of New York City and Los Angeles, the percentage of untimed test-taking is said to be close to 50 percent. These data aren’t readily available from the College Board, which publishes only statewide figures on the numbers of “accommodated” SAT takers. But Abrams noticed that in the District of Columbia—the only city whose data is separately released by the board, since D.C. is a separate jurisdiction—7 to 9 percent of all SAT-takers typically get extra time on the test. The results clearly show that these “accommodated” children are not the city’s poor and disadvantaged. Nationally, children who receive extra time on the test score lower as a group than students who don’t. In 2005, they scored an average combined 975 on the math and verbal sections, compared to 1,029 for standard test-takers. This is what one would expect for children struggling to keep up because of disabilities. But the trend was reversed among the 264 children in D.C. who took untimed SATs in 2005. They scored a combined 1,105 on the tests, well above the national average and even further above the average of 957 among D.C. children who took timed tests.

[Anonymous]

Hey, DCUM kids are brilliant kids, with a little extra time of course!

[Anonymous]

You can't judge only by scores. You can't say if score is high, child has advantage.
My child is 2e. Very good at Math (well above 700) and quite bad in English (still above national average)
Yes he has time and a half, but he has accommodations in place in school for last 7 years.

[Anonymous]

The scandal wasn't even about the extra time, but the corrupt proctor situation that made the cheating possible, where a special room was allowed and then answers were changed.

Extra time is merely intended to allow those with learning disabilities to show what they know to the same extent of a neurotypical kid. Those focusing on "extra time" should consider whether an extra time "advantage" indicates poor test construction, i.e. reliance on time to distinguish between quality of testers is a copout on the part of ACT and College Board, when time is not especially relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Atlantic article references this Slate article from 2006:

The distortions worked on the SAT and other standardized tests are revealed in data winkled out of the College Board last year by Sam Abrams, a young researcher at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Nationwide, only 2 percent of students who have taken the SAT over the past 10 years have done so untimed. Most of these students’ diagnoses are presumably genuine. But in places like Greenwich, Conn., and certain zip codes of New York City and Los Angeles, the percentage of untimed test-taking is said to be close to 50 percent. These data aren’t readily available from the College Board, which publishes only statewide figures on the numbers of “accommodated” SAT takers. But Abrams noticed that in the District of Columbia—the only city whose data is separately released by the board, since D.C. is a separate jurisdiction—7 to 9 percent of all SAT-takers typically get extra time on the test. The results clearly show that these “accommodated” children are not the city’s poor and disadvantaged. Nationally, children who receive extra time on the test score lower as a group than students who don’t. In 2005, they scored an average combined 975 on the math and verbal sections, compared to 1,029 for standard test-takers. This is what one would expect for children struggling to keep up because of disabilities. But the trend was reversed among the 264 children in D.C. who took untimed SATs in 2005. They scored a combined 1,105 on the tests, well above the national average and even further above the average of 957 among D.C. children who took timed tests.

Just an observation - in DC's calculus class at a big 3 private, at least 1/2 of the kids get extra time on exams. DC feels at a disadvantage but what can you do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The scandal wasn't even about the extra time, but the corrupt proctor situation that made the cheating possible, where a special room was allowed and then answers were changed.

Extra time is merely intended to allow those with learning disabilities to show what they know to the same extent of a neurotypical kid. Those focusing on "extra time" should consider whether an extra time "advantage" indicates poor test construction, i.e. reliance on time to distinguish between quality of testers is a copout on the part of ACT and College Board, when time is not especially relevant.

You’re wrong - the scandal was about both. Getting tagged as needing extra time AND using the guy to change scores. Did you read the indictment?

[Anonymous]

In the scandal, getting the extra time was necessary to shift the testing site to where the corrupt test proctor could do his thing. It really wasn't about extra time, per se, and it is in fact rare for students to get to take the test over two days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't judge only by scores. You can't say if score is high, child has advantage.
My child is 2e. Very good at Math (well above 700) and quite bad in English (still above national average)
Yes he has time and a half, but he has accommodations in place in school for last 7 years.

It can't be both of these thing.

[Anonymous]

Keep in mind that most kids who get accommodations actually do need them. (Parent of two kids with LDs who have had extra time as an accommodation since around the age of 10 for each - and until quite recently it was like pulling teeth to get them to use their accommodations, because they didn't want to "stand out" or have people "think they were dumb."

If kids who don't need them are getting accommodations, I think the focus should be on unethical psychologists who are certifying fake LDs, not on the fact that the College Board allows accommodations for kids with documented disabilities.

[Anonymous]

OP, this is what they should do. They should allow everyone a set time to take the test--a LONG set time, so it stops being a speed test and becomes a test about what they know and how they reason.

I've come full circle on this. My DD has a genetic eye condition, and she has to strain to see. Her eye muscles give out after focusing close for long periods of time. I used to not want her to have any accomodations because "life doesn't give you extra time." A doctor finally convinced me that that is the wrong thought process..."life is not a speed test where you must keep your eyes focused for 3 hours straight" is more like it.

So let's test what the kids know and how they think, not how fast they can squiggle it into a bubble.