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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] 
No. The better analogy is allowing someone to take a vision test with glasses! The ability to do work quickly and correctly is what standardized tests measure (in part). Allowing someone extra time to "fix careless errors" defeats the entire purpose. [/quote]

I took a vision test with glasses every year in grade-school. Why? Because the test isn't made to measure what your exact vision is. (That's way more complicated than the nurses office test). The test is made to measure if you need further intervention to correct your vision. I was already getting that intervention, so re-confirming that my vision sucked would have served nobody.

If you gave some of my fifth graders an exam without the use of a (four function) calculator you wouldn't be measuring their understanding of the content, you'd be measuring the fact that they still (after oh so much work on everyone's part) haven't developed the working memory skills to retain their multiplication facts and get so tied up in calculating them each and every time that they don't have a chance at doing higher level work without the speed afforded by a calculator. [/quote]

I think you're doing your 5th graders a lot of harm by not holding them accountable for MATH FACTS. If you're truly not testing math facts, then let everyone have the calculator.  if you ARE testing math facts, then don't let anyone have a calculator, and the ones with "dyscalcula" or whatever will have an accurate result.  If you feel that is unfair, then change the stakes of testing.

The eyeglasses analogy -- my eye doctor checks my uncorrected vision at every visit.  Letting me use glasses to check my uncorrected vision would obviously be absurd.  [/quote]

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