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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
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.   [/quote]

Here is what you do not understand.  An average kid without a documented disability who gets extra time will not [b]significantly[/b] 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.[/quote]

For the record, my kids are 3 and 1 and I have no idea about whether they are disabled or not or average or not.  I was on the right side of the 99% on standardized test scores, and my wife hovered between the 98-99% (no accommodations of course) so let's stop with weird ad hominem insinuations and the even more bizarre "disabled genius" triumphalism.

I disagree with your assertion that a 50% kid would not see a significant improvement in test scores without extra time.  I know many people who were not able to finish every section of the SAT and lost points as a result.

If that is the case, why are all the "disabled genius" parents so infuriated by the concept that we should simply give everyone a calculator and some more time and make the test more intellectually challenging.  That would let us all prove what's really going on here.  
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