<p>collage1, </p>
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<li><p>50% extra time is the standard accommodation offered, if any, to kids with dyslexia. If the dyslexia/processing speed issues are serious enough, The College Board and ACT are able to offer 100% extra time. This does extend the test to over 6 or 7 hours. They can offer the test to be taken over two consecutive days. However, what a staff psychologist at TCB told me was that they tend to reserve this for cases in which the disability is physical and not “just” cognitive. In my son’s case, his version of the disability is severe and all input and output are slow and fatiguing (he couldn’t read in 3rd grade, hand-copying a paragraph in 4th grade took him over an hour and wiped him out for the rest of the day, and if he does too much reading/writing in a compressed period of time, he gets exhausted and then gets a headache and can be out for days) and mask a brain that is close to the very top of the IQ distribution. We’ve never known the cause for this, but documented it starting in 2nd grade and presented what evidence there was from teachers, doctors and parents. It took a year to persuade TCB, though most of the time was spent waiting for them to evaluate information/respond, and got easier when we talked with the staff psychologist. They did ultimately grant 100% extra time that had to be taken over two days if the test was longer. But, part of what we needed to do was show that the issue was physical. I think other people have had different experiences. For my son, this took him from getting mid-40th percentile with no accommodations on standardized tests to >99th percentile on each of CR, Math and Writing. </p></li>
<li><p>As a result of a lawsuit under the American Disabilities Act, they cannot flag the scores or indicate in any way that the test was taken under special circumstances. This has led, unfortunately, to affluent parents trying to buy a leg up for their “neuro-typical” kids by buying opinions from testing psychologists. This in turn has led TCB and ACT to be initially skeptical of anything but the best documented claims and in particular of any claims of disability that were discovered in high school. I’m dealing with this now with my daughter, whose ADD/ADHD was not diagnosed until HS because she had an improperly diagnosed medical issue in which she lost most of her vision and, although we had her tested early on but apparently not very thoroughly, we focused on seeing if we could figure out with her vision and get it back, which we did. While TCB has granted 50% extra time, the ACT has not.</p></li>
<li><p>My general presumption would be against disclosing unless the disclosure is necessary to put the record in a favorable light. For all of the politically correct blather you hear in schools about different kinds of intelligences and wanting diversity, very few adults in the educational system (and fewer outside of it) actually believe that someone can simultaneously be very bright and have severe learning disabilities (as opposed to observable physical disabilities). I would meet with my son’s teachers at the start of every year or semester, having emailed them before a memo explaining that my son was simultaneously intellectually gifted and severely dyslexic and providing them with IQ and other scores and explanations of what they meant. It explained why he needed certain accommodations (that by the way were in his IEP) and what happened when he didn’t get them and what happened when he did. You could see the disbelief (despite the fact that I was showing them IQ scores, you could see them thinking “another overly-proud parent in an affluent town who wants extra privileges for his otherwise normal kid whom he thinks is really special”). My son is now a student at a top LAC, picked in part over some Ivies because they said they would be and have been flexible and accommodating with respect to his LDs. The Disabilities Services office emails each of his professors to tell them they have a kid to whom they should grant extra time on tests. He’s then responsible for meeting with his professors early in the term and working out the specifics of testing, etc. I met two of his professors at Parents Weekend. As an example of how people in education think about kids with LDs, each told me that they were concerned when they got the call from Disabilities Services because kids with LDs have traditionally not done well in their courses. They both expressed surprise (and satisfaction) that he’d gotten the highest score (or about the highest in the class, not sure which) on both the first and second mid-terms (they seem to have two) but they were not expecting it. [His performance has continued, though he told me that one of the professors appeared not to like him because the professor handled dealing with the extra testing time in a way that was inefficient for the professor. However, the same professor gave him an A+ final grade for the course.]</p></li>
<li><p>If your daughter needs the accommodations to perform, she should not feel shy about requesting them. My son’s self-image is that he is among the smarter people he knows and that he is just plain dyslexic. That is part of who he is. He would prefer to be non-dyslexic, but that is just who he is and he is not embarrassed by it. And he cannot easily show his intelligence and knowledge in an academic context without certain accommodations. Interestingly enough, the head of Special Ed at his HS told me that he was the poster boy for SpEd at his school because the SpEd caseworkers could now go to teachers who were resistant to following IEPs (and there were quite a few) and say, “Remember ShawSon. He was really struggling to keep up with the work without accommodations but with accommodations, he was the top student in the class.” [He had other accommodations in HS beyond longer test times]. One of his favorite teachers told us later that she did not believe initially that ShawSon needed accommodations (and certainly not double time) and he struggled early on in her class. But, he convinced her over time and she wrote “ShawSon is a permanent part of my story as an educator…a reminder of how flexibility and understanding, without lowering standards, can really make a difference” and he finished the second half of the year with an A+ on every test she gave. So, although your daughter need not think about others when she asks for accommodations, but she may be helping others in doing so.</p></li>
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<p>My son cannot listen and write at the same time. His LAC pays for note-takers for him (kids in his classes). He’s not embarrassed about that either. They seem to pick super-organized girls with really neat hand-writing, though they don’t always have the same level of understanding that ShawSon has. In high school, he had a similar friend – super-organized and knew when everything was due and all the requirements, something my son was much worse at at the time – and she figured out how smart he was. So, she would coach him on what he needed to do and he would explain to her how to solve the hardest problems, etc. Very symbiotic. She was a delightful, bright and ambitious kid – currently a happy student at an Ivy – who could get a monosyllabic teenage boy to remain on the phone for an hour and a half. It doesn’t appear that his note-takers have yet figured out the potential symbiosis. </p>
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<li> Ditto to limabeans comments. Self-advocacy becomes perhaps the critical skill.</li>
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