I don’t argue with people; I do try to educate where I can. Extra time is used to level the playing field. Otherwise, dyslexics are being tested on two skills (reading ability and the subject matter) while neurotypical students are being tested on only one. That’s hardly fair to the dyslexic students.
Perhaps exams should be administered via a computer with a scroll screen feature that scrolls up line by line at 2/3 the reading speed of the average neurotypical kid. Then give them all 2 hours and see how much the neurotypical kids can finish. They won’t get to the end, but it won’t have anything to do with how well they know math or physics. It will have everything to do with how fast they can process the words. Or we could make all tests oral exams. It will negatively affect the visual learners who perform best on written exams, but dyslexics would fare much better. The dyslexic kids will have lost the “advantage” of extra time. If it negatively impacts your neurotypical visual learners that’s unfortunate, but giving them extra time and other aids would be unfair to the other students.
I like Mom2collegekids’ suggestion of just making tests longer and letting all the kids use the time. That would prevent neurotypical kids whose families can afford to pay for a diagnosis from getting an unfair advantage over other neurotypical kids. Let’s move away from multiple choice tests while we’re at it and start making students write. It would take extra time and money, of course, but I think we could get a clearer picture of how kids think, reason, and communicate from an essay exam than from a multiple choice test. It seems like it would cut down on cheating too.
Dyslexic kids are not getting an unfair advantage. Neurotypical kids have lots of them – their brains don’t skip over words when they read, they don’t replace words with other words that have the same initial and ending sounds, they don’t skip over sentence clues like capitalization and ending punctuation, they don’t leave out function words (like of, from, or the), they don’t mistake one letter for another (reading “b” for "d’ or “p” for “q”), they don’t have tracking issues that cause them to skip whole lines of text, they don’t make rote memorization a struggle, they don’t forget the first one or two answers on a multiple choice test by the time they get to the last one, they don’t have issues sequencing things, they don’t have to labor through reading to get to the math on word problems – yet dyslexic kids struggle with all of that and more. It doesn’t mean they can’t perform the work, it just takes longer. They are doctors and lawyers and scientists, so they are not less intelligent than neurotypical kids. It doesn’t impact their ability to perform their jobs. It does make laboring through three hour exams a challenge.
People who don’t like that dyslexics can get extra time on tests might want to start advocating for these children so they receive the free, appropriate education that’s provided to your children. Press your districts to quit placing them in special ed classes with students who have behavioral issues. Convince them to quit denying services to kids who need them just because services cost money and they don’t want to pay it. Provide the children with the kind of systematic interventions that they actually need, not the less expensive stop gap measures that don’t help. Quit passing them on so they’re some other teacher’s problem. It’s very easy to complain. It’s a lot of work to try to make meaningful changes.
People who are interested in learning about dyslexia should visit [The Yale Center for Dyslexia](Dyslexia FAQ - Yale Dyslexia) website or invest time in reading Sally Shaywitz’s books.
That’s a false equivalency; the policy is in place to prevent cheating. Taking a moment during a meeting is not the same thing.
UT is a huge university. There are 48,000 students there and many classes have hundreds of students in them. They have to have some kind of policy or there would be constant coming and going during exams, and cheating would be even more rampant than it already is.
I do like the idea of establishing a policy of a mandatory break mid-test. The profs would figure out very quickly how to design the test to ensure no cheating during the universal break.
Upon reading more, it seems to me that this is not a bladder issue; it’s an anxiety issue. A 24 year old man who goes to the restroom before the test begins, then feels urgency within one hour (and claims he didn’t consume a lot of liquids beforehand) is probably having an anxiety problem. OP states he has a history of anxiety. If this is truly a common occurrence, and the profs at this university tend to follow the written policy, then he may well need to approach this from that angle rather than from a strictly medical angle. But as long as the policy at this school is in place, he doesn’t have a lot of recourse if he doesn’t want to try to get accommodations in place in advance.
extra test time is given for a whole host of reasons. ADHD is a big one. College Board gives up to 2.5 times the original time and approves the vast majority of the requests for extra time
Just because a school has a policy doesn’t mean its correct. Half of all college students experience anxiety at some point during college. They shouldn’t need labels and professional diagnosis to go to the bathroom. Cheating can happen without a bathroom break and will continue to do so. And you can’t get accommodations when you wake up in the morning with a stomach bug or UTI. One bad apple so let’s punish everybody. Additionally, there will always be the bad apples who can circumvent the system. Do you understand people cannot get all these accommodations you want them to have. Ever have stomach issues unexpectedly? So let’s spend $1000 to get a diagnosis so you can go potty and we wonder why health care costs are through the roof.
^^your examples are not supporting your pov tiger, bcos the examples that you are referencing all require prior approval. You just can’t show up on test day and tell the CollegeBoard proctor that you need extra time. He or she will tell you to go pound sand. (Just like the OP’s prof.)
It takes months and quite a medical history to get a disability approved. It is a very complicated process. My D is disabled and it is an arduous process. And even then the school has the final determination of accommodations.
perhaps, but that’s not the professor’s fault, is it? (Heck, it ain’t his/her job, since s/he has no expertise and is not qualified to make a judgement.)
@bluebayou I could not find where the law requires prior approval Maybe you can point me point me to a section of the law. It is always good practice to get prior approval but not always possible as in OPs case
Then why bother having a policy or a DSS at all? Every student can just approach their professor at any moment and state that they have a disability requiring a visit to the bathroom, extra time on the exam, and 3 donuts immediately. Or else.
@tiger1307 college board does not typically grant 2.5 extended time for ADD/ADHD. That’s reserved for other disabilities that greatly affect speed, such as those who are blind or those who have accommodations for someone to read the test to them aloud.
Accommodations from college board are not easy to get, especially for ADHD. And they do NOT approve the vast majority of requests. If you ever researched the process yourself or looked at the learning disability forum on here, you’d no that was the case. College board looks for a history of accommodations in school, so if you have a new diagnosis (particularly if you have high grades) and/or never got accommodations from your high school, you have an extremely high chance of being denied.
As someone who has 50% extended time in college (for a learning disability and a neurodevelopmental disorder) but did not have accommodations in high school or for standardized testing, I can tell you that it makes a big difference for those who need it and is indeed just leveling the playing field. In high school, I was a B student who routinely timed out on tests. My teachers would recognize that I was bright based on my participation in class and connections I made, but my test scores and grades did not reflect that. The SAT was extremely difficult for me and I didn’t break 2000.
In college, however, I applied for and was granted my accommodation. It has made a huge difference. I am able to complete all the questions on tests now, allowing me to show all of my knowledge, not just what I was able to get to. My test scores are not inflated as opposed to my classmates. I’ve gotten the highest score on a test several times, but my classmates in those classes would probably identify me as one of the best in the class. I’ve had other tests where I was nowhere near the top score, even with my accommodations. I’ve gotten a C on an exam I had extended time on. The extended time doesn’t give you answers that you didn’t have before; if you don’t know what you’re doing, extended time doesn’t help. I had one professor who let me have as much time as I wanted on one essay test (I believe it took me over 3 hours; she let others who hadn’t finished continue as well, but I took way longer than anyone else) and I still got a B on it. Sometimes, I don’t even use my extra time because I finish in the normal time frame, which is fine too, and just means that I didn’t need any extra time on that particular test; I’m not going to sit there longer if I don’t need to.
<<<
I like Mom2collegekids’ suggestion of just making tests longer and letting all the kids use the time. That would prevent neurotypical kids whose families can afford to pay for a diagnosis from getting an unfair advantage over other neurotypical kids.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
I agree.
And, I imagine that many students with chronic issues either don’t know or have the means to go thru the whole process are being left behind.
I would rather that everyone be given extra time. As I mentioned, most will just finish and turn in. The rest will finish within the test period.
I’m not an attorney, but I have a bit of negotiating advice for the OP if he wishes to argue this further with the dean or other school representatives:
DO NOT say you were not permitted to use the rest room. You were permitted to use the restroom; you weren’t chained to your desk. You just weren’t permitted to use the restroom AND THEN return to your test.
There is a difference. And you need to understand the difference, because others do.
And your beating to death the idea of denying an “adult” to use the bathroom is not productive for you. Anyone’s response- whether they verbalize it or not, will be that as an adult you should have been better prepared. A child, on the other hand might not think he will have to use the bathroom later; the child only thinks about Now. A child might be more likely to be permitted to leave because a child is not expected to think ahead as much as an adult is.
I’m not saying you didn’t prepare; I’m saying if you use the “adult has to pee” argument that it is a weak argument, and is more likely to work against you than work for you.
You don’t think professors would just gear the exam longer? It’s somewhat subjective what constitutes a 2-hour test and what constitutes a 3-hour test.
Most of the kids who don’t get a diagnosis in their primary years who are severely affected by a learning disability may never make it to college. I myself am Dyslexic and started my school career labeled by the bureaucrats as retarded. Back in those days services for learning disabilities were few and far between. I was fortunate and had parents who realized something was very wrong. Many hours with specialized private tutors at home made from nineth grade on made it possible for me to even have the opportunity to graduate from high school and go on to college. I survived without any accommodations in the school setting but it was an uphill battle. I can say this severely dyslexic students are handicapped in the classroom setting and taking tests. I saw everything flipped. A B was a D. Bad was dab. It takes longer to read without a doubt. You swap out words not there on the paper. You answer the opposite question. You draw a house upside down and sideways and it looks exactly like the upright house in your brain. I don’t know how I can see things straight now but I remember the frustration and the crying. I remember not understanding a .,?! until about the age of 17.
Irrelevant to the OP. The policy existed at that time, the prof was within his rights to enforce it.
The OP has received advice to take up the cause of trying to get the policy changed if he so desires. Alternatively, if he simply wants the policy to not be enforced for himself only, there are also channels in place to address it.
I think some laws are stupid. I don’t get to break the law and demand the cop who pulls me over make an exception because I don’t think the law is “right.” I’d have to work to effect change through established channels.
@younghoss - This thread has kind of morphed into a general topic of accommodations. But I’m with you, I wish we’d stick to the topic at hand.
@Nrdsb4 - Yes, it is irrelevant to the OP. But this thread has jumped back and forth between the OP’s specific situation, and the general case of whether students should be allowed to use the bathroom. That statement was made as a general comment, not specific to the OP.
@sylvan8798 are you aware of the section of the law that requires prior approval? @guineagirl96 actually 85 per cent per cent of the requests to college board are approved and 92 per cent for ACT. 90 per cent of the accommodation requests relate to non physical disabilities but to disabilities such as ADHD eccetera