<p>@thegegors “the standardized test should be the objective test while the colleges should be the subjective readers of how the kids preformed based on their situation”-I could not agree with you more.</p>
<p>No, aarelle, YOU are getting in the way of MY right of FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. Who the h*ll are you to tell me what I can and cannot say? I am NOT being “ableist” am am certainly not “spew[ing] ableist crap”.</p>
<p>Please explain HOW I am stepping on other people’s rights. I am simply voicing my opinion-is this illegal? </p>
<p>I respect your opinion that it’s our society’s responsibility to provide accommodations (by the way, you spelt this word wrong in your post-you wrote “accomodations”), but <em>I</em> believe that standardized testing should be objective data, pure and simple. There should be any stretching of the rules for kids with learning disabilities.</p>
<p>The problem with your second last paragraph is that you DON’T KNOW for a FACT that extra time = a more accurate depiction of a student’s abilities.</p>
<p>Also, I believe that Rasberi said “ADD people should just focus better”, which goes against your point of view. It’s true. They should focus better!</p>
<p>RainbowSprinkles.
First, and perhaps most importantly, I’m sure Rasberi was being sarcastic, as her/his statement was immediately followed by the statement that “depressed people should just cheer up.”</p>
<p>Have you ever heard that when someone starts shouting (in this case, “caps-locking”), it’s because he knows he is losing? The same applies to personal attacks, including attacks on grammar. If you feel so passionately about this issue that you are attacking people you don’t know in an online forum, perhaps it is a sign that you should take your passions and use them to try to change what is upsetting you instead.
I would also suggest spending some time around people with mental disabilities. You’d be surprised what you’ll learn. </p>
This is something that has been studied by the people at CollegeBoard and by advocates for the learning disabled, etc. It’s not as if someone just arbitrarily said “let’s give these people some extra time” without any studies on it. Maybe if you read some scholarly papers on the issues involved and the studies done, you would have a different opinion based on science rather than emotion.</p>
<p>I am not attacking anyone. It’s obvious that the use of cap locks is to indicate an EMPHASIS on certain words or phrases. Don’t victimize yourself or others. I’m attacking no one. Maybe you should consider the fact that I was simply correcting grammar and/or spelling just because I was correcting grammar and/or spelling. Don’t take it so personally.</p>
<p>For your information, I spent my entire summer volunteering at a camp for mentally disabled kids. </p>
<p>sylvan8798, that is my personal opinion and that’s all it is. There’s no need to assume that I am acting purely out of emotion (which, by the way, I am not). I’ve thought long and hard about the issue. I’ve weighed the pros and cons, along with the flaws of both sides. After logical reasoning and some research, I have concluded that this is what <em>I</em> feel is fair and just. Pure and simple: SAT is standardized testing-it is objective data. Kids with learning disabilities should not receive any extra time.</p>
<p>It’s clear that you don’t respect my personal opinion, which is fine by me.</p>
<p>^yes, that is one of the reasons why I don’t support CB giving extra time. Many people abuse this rule (I know a lot of people from my high school do it).</p>
<p>@sylvan8798 I like your previous post: </p>
<p>"One problem I do have with the whole “learning disability” concept is that I think too many things and too many kids are “diagnosed” with some “disability” or other. Little Johnny would rather watch TV or play computer games than sit for hours adding fractions. Adding fractions is not fun for little Johnny. In fact he finds it excruciatingly boring. So Johnny is doing poorly in math class. </p>
<p>Johnny’s mom is not happy, because this doesn’t look good down at the tennis club. She takes him to the nearest “expert” and gets a diagnosis of “mathlyxia” or whatever the latest craze is. Now Little Johnny has an excuse - he has a disability - and Mom can excuse poor Johnny, who is “disabled” after all. Both Mom and child can play the victim, and Johnny never has to trouble himself with boring old math again. Who can criticize a disabled child?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, US scores in math continue to fall against those of other countries and we wonder why."</p>
<p>RS - It’s not that I don’t “respect” your personal opinion. I just don’t entirely agree with it. I agree that sometimes there may be abuses, but that is true of any such thing. I think, as you just quoted, that too many kids get labeled as having “disabilities” when it is really just a copout. But at the same time, I also think there are valid issues that should warrant extra time or accommodations on the standardized exams. </p>
<p>I don’t think that a college admissions office would be able to discern whether Suzie’s 1800 is because that’s the best she could do or because she just needed extra time to get as much completed as her academically similar peers. IOW, how would they know if she got every problem she attempted correct but only got to 75% of them versus she tried all of them and only got 75% correct? And shouldn’t those 2 possibilities warrant different consideration in the admissions process?</p>