College Board accommodations more accessible!

A teacher friend sent this to me this morning: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/02/finally-college-board-makes-it-easier-for-students-with-disabilities-to-get-sat-accommodations/

Too late for my kids – one of who has dysgraphia and therefore was never able to finish an AP test due to slow writing speed – but great news for those of you still in the thick of it. It’s about time the College Board pulled their head out and acknowledged that if you have an accommodation at school already, they should give it to you when testing.

@yankeeinGA Thank you so much for posting that information. Thanks to you we now have better accommodations from the College Board! My D is a sophomore with ADHD, anxiety/depression and “probable” dyslexia. I applied for accommodations for her sophomore year PSAT. We requested both 50% additional time plus MP3 Audio. They granted the extra time but turned down our request for the MP3 audio because they said her reading scores on the Woodcock Johnson showed she could read on her own. She did OK on the PSAT (1190) but ran out of time in each section, especially reading, and had most of her errors in the last 15% of the score sheet where she had bubbled in random answers. We considered asking for 100% extra time for the next testing, but D said that she wouldn’t need that much extra time if she had the MP3 audio. After reading your post, I talked to our 504 person at the high school. She clarified the language in D’s 504 about giving her text-to-speech or other audio accommodations when available. We resubmitted the request for MP3 audio and quickly got a response from the College Board. D now has MP3 audio for the PSAT and SAT and can have a reader for subject tests and AP exams. Thanks very much because our school’s 504 person didn’t know about this new policy!

D said that for her, the difference between listening to an audio version of a text and reading a text is like the differnce between riding a bike downhill and riding a tricycle up a mountain.