HELP! CollegeBoard Appeal...

<p>I just got a letter from Collegeboard rejecting my application for 50% extended time.
I was diagnosed w/ ADHD in november 08, so I rushed to send in the application in time for AP exams (3 weeks from now). At that time, I had only had about 2 months worth of documentation w/ extended time at school. I now have 5 months worth of documentation, showing significant increases in my scores, not to mention, I have grown acostumed to test-taking at my own pace. I have always fully utilized the extra time and believe that I NEED this accomodation to achieve my maximum potential.</p>

<p>Is there ANYTHING absolutely ANYTHING that can be done so that I could get approval before APs???</p>

<p>Honestly, I would break one of my legs to get approval at this point.</p>

<p>The time frame makes it difficult; it took months to win an appeal for my kid. Here’s what I would do if I were you. Have a parent telephone the ETS office that handles appeals tomorrow and try to speak with a director or assistant director or someone who can actually open your file and answer questions. Ask them point blank if there’s any way they can process an appeal in this short time frame. Be as friendly as possible and try to get them to be specific about why the request was denied. Also find out if it would be possible to take make-up AP exams later on should you decline to take the exam without accommodations before the appeal is processed. Try to get as much info as possible as to why, specifically, your appeal was rejected, and what sort of documentation the ETS would need in order to change its mind and to provide accommodations that are consistent with your 504 plan. The psychologist who did your diagnosis and suggestions for accommodation can then quickly write the ETS a letter geared toward the ETS’s specific issues and FAX it to them asap. At that point, it would probably also be wise to send them the original testing data, including the raw data and the interpretations by the psychologist. In the new letter, the psychologist needs to be extremely concrete for the ETS, explaining in detail using data from your testing and his/her observations of you to justify the requested accommodation. Even though it seems very obvious, the psychologist has to make a connection between the diagnosis and the specific disabilities, and the need for the specific accommodations in a way that a person who knows nothing about LD’s would understand. </p>

<p>If any of the issues involved in the denial of accommodations could also be addressed by teachers, download the form for teachers to fill out that is on the ETS website. Teachers who can comment on their observations of how you functioned before versus after you received accommodations in very concrete terms would be best. If the teachers wanted to include dramatic anecdotes based upon their observations, it is my impression that this can be helpful. Collect and FAX these letters as well. </p>

<p>Try to get the name of a specific person in a managerial position (not just the guy who answers the phone) to whom all of this info can be express mailed or faxed, given that the whole process needs to be expedited.</p>

<p>Another avenue to take might be to get info from the Civil Rts. division of the Dept. of Education for your region. I know that at least one family on this board has had disappointing experiences with the Dept of Ed, but you might gear your questions toward whether in their experience AP’s can be taken later, rather than being taken while an appeal is pending without the needed accommodations, and also questions addressing the time frame for the rejection, which has left you no time to appeal. Talk with your parents about this, but if you are certain that you will be unable to do well on AP’s without accommodations, you might consider how you want to proceed in terms of taking the test. Finally, if cost is not a big issue, have your parents check out whether there is a lawyer in your area who handles cases related to LD accommodation and see if he or she has suggestions. The biggest problem I see here is the time factor. If you applied for accommodations in November, there is no excuse for the ETS to have taken this long to deny your request. This puts you in an extremely difficult position and I wonder if there might be legal ramifications of their taking so long, leaving you insufficient time to mount an appeal, that could be helpful in getting them to reconsider quickly. This is speculation on my part, but it might be worth asking a lawyer. In our case, the appeal was won (months later) just in time to take the test in question, so we didn’t have to go the legal route.</p>

<p>Just thought of something else you need to be prepared for. In talking to the ETS, it is likely that someone there will tell you that they don’t think that students who can do average work without accommodations should get accommodations no matter how severe or well-documented the LD, or how far above average the student’s high school work has been. Clearly this is ridiculous on so many different levels that when you hear it for the first time, you might want to fight them on it. You might want to point out that average students aren’t taking AP exams in the first place. You might want to point out that this would keep brilliant LD students out of universities appropriate for people with their GPA’s, knowledge and abilities. You might want to point out the absurdity of this with analogies to denying accommodations that would enable physically challenged students to do better than average work. (I actually did point out all this, mostly while screaming.) My advice is, don’t. Just stick to your mission of getting as much info as you can as to why your request for necessary accommodations was denied so that you can come up with the most effective, best documented appeal.</p>

<p>wow, man. I must have been really lucky to get the extended time from ETS without any hitch like this!</p>

<p>No kidding. This is partly why all those snarky – well my kid would have gotten into Yale if only her spot hadn’t been stolen by all those other, less qualified kids who don’t really have LD’s who cheated their way to 30 extra points on the SAT’s by getting their fraudulent requests for extra time rubber-stamped by the ETS – posts make me apoplectic. You have to wonder how the aggrieved posters imagine that all those legions of other less qualified kids without LD’s manage to get past the ETS while so many genuinely LD kids with well-documented, severe diagnoses and disabilities can’t get accommodations. Go figure.</p>

<p>Well, all I can say is that this is just more evidence that ETS is pure evil.</p>

<p>Is there any evidence as to whether the ACT folks are more easy to work with on this? Or are they just the devil twin from the mid-west?</p>

<p>ACT is worse. D got scribe and extended time for SATs with writing, also can’t fill in scantrons (extremely dyslexic, bubbles come up off the page), got NOTHING from ACT. But…I have to tell you, to get the accomodations from ETS we had to send in every single testing and every single IEP and 504 dating back to when she was in 3rd grade. Contacted an attorney, too, just in case. Even with that? nothing from ACT.</p>

<p>And the ppl who talk about fake LD for extended time? Please! I don’t even bother getting into it.</p>

<p>It’s so strange. I’ve heard stories running in the opposite direction with dyslexic students receiving accommodation (not sure about scribes, but certainly keyboard use, which seems to be a big sticking point for the ETS) from ACT virtually in the return mail while the ETS was refusing to accommodate despite endless documentation, appeals and legal involvement. I suspect that students are best served sending all of their materials to both. The problem is, you need ETS for AP’s and often for SAT II’s, even when using the ACT.</p>

<p>No. I know. We totally expected to get the ACT accomodations more easily than the SATs…It’s the usual story, though, because she’s bright…even without the accomodations…above average. I’m sure you know the story. It’s not only her story, and I’m well aware it could be WAY worse.</p>

<p>I hope the OP gets her GC to help her with the accomodation process, getting the school involved helped tons, I think. It takes time, but it’s worth the fight. We were turned down by both originally and appealed both. Once SAT came through, we just dropped it with ACT because we didn’t need them. The truth though is that I’ve really heard that ACT is more reasonable too. But, and this is the thing, the decisions are made by individuals. If you apply three times (we only did it twice), you usually hit the person who can read the documentation.</p>

<p>The important thing, though, and this is what people won’t tell you, is that you HAVE to get the accomodations on at least one of them. When you go to college, the dss will use the same exact guidelines to determine your accomodations…if they know you got SAT, they are way more amenable. And college is way diff. than HS in this way.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

<p>Same experience with college here. The college and Dept of Ed both seemed very much aware of what it took to overcome the ETS bias against the particular kinds of accommodations my kid needed and seemed to take our requests far more seriously upon learning what the ETS had ultimately provided. Also, the fact that one has actually won an ETS appeal accurately conveys the message that one is willing to fight very hard, document very well, and advocate relentlessly. It conveys the message that having an underqualified person who may not have a lot of experience evaluating complex data just saying no to the accommodation request because it’s oh so much easier for the institution may not, in fact, be the institution’s easiest or best stance.</p>

<p>I think that the message for parents is that it’s vital to fight for your kid every step of the way and to document well even in situations in which you encounter no resistance. (For example, even if the elementary school is being very nice and informally giving the kid accommodation without a formal plan, get someone there to write down what they’re doing, the problems they’ve observed, and why the accommodations seem necessary and get this into the kid’s file – or at least into your file. It is very difficult to reconstruct this stuff years after the fact and you can bet that someday, you’re going to need it for the ETS, the ACT, or your kid’s college disbilities office.)</p>

<p>Although I do know of situations in which kids with LD’s documented early in elementary school with 504’s and consistent results on retesting and the same accommodations throughout school are then denied those accommodations by the ETS with the if this is a gifted kid who can do average work without accommodations, then we don’t have to grant accomodations rationale. (Hint: If there’s a keyboard involved, there seems to be a tendency to rubber stamp deny.) The kids then received the same accommodations they’d gotten since they were tiny again in college.</p>

<p>TKDchick, in appealing, we found it was helpful to get our son’s teachers to comment on a) the extent of the disability that they saw, b) the kinds of accommodations that were routinely offered, and their belief in the necessity for those accommodations. People suggested to us that ETS discounts private practitioners because the family can pay them to have an opinion, whereas teachers and SpEd folks have no vested interest. </p>

<p>It took a full year for me to get what we thought was appropriate from ETS. We gave that letter as part of the ACT application, but we didn’t specifically request some of the things the ETS gave easily like breaks as needed, which was important. ETS gave a scribe or computer (instead of our request to use speech recognition technology); my son chose the scribe which he likes best. ACT only gave computer. But the ACT acted quickly. [They actually sent out an incorrect letter and by the time I got it, they had informed our school they were sending out a correction.] But they had given out double time split over two days for long tests with no fuss, whereas that had taken a year to get from ETS.</p>

<p>Yes, D got stuck with scribe instead of Dragon. But it worked. Not ideal for her, but she was soooo grateful at that point.</p>

<p>Shawbridge’s recs are important, to get the teachers involved really assisted us. And, too, whatever the time to get it right, take the time. It’s a really indelible marker for what will happen in college.</p>

<p>(on a side note: S. I’ve been verry interested in reading your posts and the direction you’ve taken with your son, as our daughter’s situation is really identical, except I think she’s a little bit less willing, at this stage, to battle with any system. really tired, at this point, from the battle. I’ll be rooting for your son, and interested to hear how he does!)</p>

<p>I’m sorry, it seems like you’re going to have to study like the rest of us.</p>

<p>Pay no attention to justinsn. There are always going to be people who are unfamiliar with learning disabilities, and who imagine that if students with learning disabilities only tried harder, they wouldn’t have the disabilities. </p>

<p>Also, if I only tried harder to see, I wouldn’t need glasses. It’s risible when you think about it.</p>

<p>I’ll add to all the valuable information here that some professionals are just more experienced and savvier about what kind of analysis and diagnosis will satisfy ETS. They know the magic words. It could be worthwhile exploring familiarity with ETS standards and prior ETS successes or failures when choosing who will do an evaluation. There’s likely at least as much art as science in this process.</p>

<p>WOW! Thank you soo much!!! I have spoken with my Learning specialist and he did in fact speak with the Collegeboard. However, I only read your post today (I thought that posters were supposed to be notified via e-mail… -_-) and seeing as how the AP’s are next week… Quite frankly there is little I can do now. All of these tests aggravate me so much!!!
I just don’t get it: I work my butt off all year and come out with 3’s/4’s on my AP’s b/c apparently I can’t fill in ovals fast enough. With extended time, I can reach my full potential and attain 4’s/5’s because I HONESTLY know the information. </p>

<p>What is there not to understand? :(</p>

<p>So glad your learning specialist is making an effort on your behalf. Did the person he spoke with at ETS tell him what their concerns were? Especially if this is the case, this would be the moment to download the teacher forms from the ETS website section on LD’s and see if some of your teachers – it could be teachers from years ago, even – would be willing to fill the forms out quickly stating clearly that you need your accommodations in order to learn and to be able to be evaluated fairly, especially with concrete (even dramatic) anecdotes if possible. Shawbridge has very good suggestions in this area in an earlier post. The forms don’t have to take long to fill out. Then, if he will, have the learning specialist FAX the forms to the person he talked to at ETS and keep following up, seeing if there is any way to expedite a new decision based on the new info. If the ETS contact was at a lower level, have your learning specialist see if he can get to the level of an assistant director or other higher level administrator. Be sure to have him document what they say to him. The situation you describe is infuriating and I hope you will be able to prevail at least in time for next year’s AP’s if not this year’s. Sorry you’re having to deal with this.</p>

<p>This is the kind of thing about learning “disabilities” which drives me crazy. Not being able to fill in a bubble fast enough has got nothing to do with learning! I can’t believe it when the kids have to prove these things time and time again. It’s ludicrous. Good luck to you. And, too, read the note takers thread, too.</p>

<p>The thing about going through this is learning how to plan ahead and fight for things. You almost automatically have to assume you WONT get it at first and even if they say you will, you have to assume it will be something you will have to stay on top of. </p>

<p>All of this stuff can get really draining, too. I assume you are bright and I would suggest, too, as you look into your college options that you take into account your tolerance for these kinds of battles. Make sure you speak to kids who have been in the disability program at the colleges and not just the people in charge of the disability program, also speak to parents who have had kids go through these colleges.</p>

<p>The offices will promise you much and deliver as little as it can, as if it gets federal money it has to accept “qualified” students. But…it does not have to accomodate you easily, or facillitate your accomodations for you. I only say this because you seem already frustrated and I “get” that, and I hope you take it into account in your college selection process. Find out how easily the students IN the college actually got thier accomodations, how much time they spent on making sure they got their accomodations, if there is anyone who will assist them in getting these when professors balk, because they will. Somebody always does.</p>

<p>Best of luck to you!</p>

<p>I’ve been diagnosed with ADD since the 3rd grade and you don’t see me complaining.</p>

<p>Amazing.</p>

<p>The poster mentioned that local school accommodation only came through just before the big admissions test with only a few months of documentation. If the poster was really disabled, the documentation would go back for years. This case smells of somebody jamming through a fake accommodation; I’m not surprised ETS turned it down.</p>