Reply to Claiming a disability on the SAT/ACT - have people been gaming the system?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Why do we have accommodations at all, except in severe cases? I understand if you're blind and need the test read to you, or you have a phsyical disability and can't easily fill in the circles on the sheet -- then extra time seems warranted.

But isn't the goal of the test to measure against other students? Why not have the same testing environment for all then? I realize some will score poorer than others, but isn't that exactly what it's trying to measure?

As an employer, if an aptitude test reflects your job duties, then it's useful to know how much you can accomplish within a fixed amount of time, because that's part of the job.[/quote]

Would you make a kid who wears glasses take them off to take the test? Other kids are not allowed to have magnifiers so why let the kid with glasses wear them?

The accommodations level the playing field. I have one severe ADD kid and one non-ADD kid. The ADD kid will have to re-read the question over and over again because she forgot what she just read or will become hyper focused on a cough or something else. The non-ADD kid doesn't notice someone coughing and has normal ability to regulate her concentration. ADD is the inability to regulate focus it actually doesn't mean that they can never focus they just have less control on what they focus on. [/quote]

No, I wrote that a physical disability should be accommodated, like needing to wear glasses.

It's the ADD example that I'm focusing on (no pun intended). Some people take longer than others; some do math better than others; some write better than others. These should all be reflected in the test results, and they are _except_ the "some people take longer time" -- they get accomodations.

I'm not great at math -- should I be allowed to use a calculator while the others are not? Hardly seems fair.[/quote]

With ADD, there are so many factors including if the child is medicated.  They can do their testing unmedicated to get the accommodations in place and then be medicated for the actual SAT.

There are so many variables to if kids should get accommodations.  I don't know what the answer is but it sucks being a parent with a child with a true disorder from birth that is getting better in time but we are told in less its ADHD or ASD by the school, they will not help as they want those diagnosis to get more staff.  So, instead our child goes with support at school and because we pay heavily for it outside things are very deceiving.  Right now my child does well on testing but he's one of those kids that could do even better with a bit more time and support.  Its hard to establish what he is capable of because of what his disorder looks like and few really understand it.

I think only extreme cases should get accommodations for things like SAT.  We have a friend's child who gets heavy supports in school and I have no idea how she will function outside which makes me very sad to see she's not getting what she really needs.  Parents were so focused on work arounds that no one is working on the real issues.

Many of us didn't do well on the SAT's and still went to good colleges and thrived.  SAT's aren't everything.  [/quote]

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