You are definitely right in that sense. But when you have a kid who is a high achiever, and can and want to do it, would you discourage them? In our family, mine was the third child going in to college. First brother didn’t want to spend the time, got a decent but not stellar score, ended up at a public instate university, loved it, and did well. Second brother, decided to prep a little more, got a better score, and is now at private university OOS that he loves. Now comes our third, she just wanted more. She wanted to do everything she could to get her goal. She also had a friend group who were all high achievers and they all egged each other on. So it just depends on the kid.
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Absolutely, if your child wants to spend the time they should. But if schools your daughter wanted to attend were TO or simply did away with standardized testing would she really be disappointed that she couldn’t spend hours studying how to take a test faster than other students? What if she didn’t need the score to reach her goal? Or there were other ways of achieving it? Would she take those extra hours and spend it doing things she was interested in pursuing?
It’s hard for me to answer “what if” questions when it comes to our personal situation. She was not just a test-prepper per say, she was well involved in school student council, athletic activities, volunteerism. The premise is that the hours of prepping only benefited her in getting a high score, I think it did more than that. There’s inherent value in dedication and hard work, a goal set and achieved, not to mention being able to sit for a long exam and keep your cool and focus. I think those skill will serve her well if there’s a GRE, MCAT, LSAT her future.
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“If the disability makes them unable to work accurately at lightning speed, and the test is designed to require just that, then extra time gives them an advantage.”
Actually, it doesn’t give an advantage rather it accommodates for the disability no different than accommodations for other disabilities. It adjusts the field to make it more even for their processing speed relative to someone who does not have a disability in the area of processing speed.
If we have the same aptitude, but my processing speed is average and average speed allows one to process 10 items per minute accurately, but you have a processing disability that results in you only being able to process 7 items per minute accurately, then I have an inherent advantage over you because of your disability. The additional time for you is intended to adjust for my inherent advantage as someone who does not have your disability so that we are tested evenly to show our aptitude given one of us has a disability and one does not.
One way they test young children for ADHD for example is by giving tests that measure their aptitude and tests that measure processing speed and then seeing if there is a significant difference between the two.
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Yes. The thing is, a lot of people are getting extra time who do not have a processing speed disability, and the test is designed to make it extremely difficult for ALL students to finish all the questions in the time allotted. So the solution is, re-design the test to allow ALL students plenty of time, so that everyone can finish it in the normal time allotted. That way, extra time gives no advantage whatsoever, and only the kids who REALLY need it would ask for it, because, after all, who wants to sit there staring at the clock when you’ve already comfortably finished the test? But SAT/ACT wouldn’t do it. They just rolled over on the flagging issue, then just continued on with tests with extreme time pressure. The colleges realize that a lot of the kids from the prep schools and wealthy suburbs (as many as 1/3 to 1/2) are getting extended time, while the kids from the poorer areas are not. Frankly, for this reason alone, unless the time pressure element is removed from the SAT/ACT, I think they’re doomed. Two years of test optional is going to be enough for the colleges to see how the ones they accepted without test scores perform. I don’t think that colleges are going to require SAT/ACT scores again after the pandemic is over.
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Don’t have a strong opinion on the testing/not testing issue, but to those who point out that GPA is more closely correlated to college success: that is a historical analysis and doesn’t necessarily apply any more. As illustration, I live in a school district which at the urging of parents A) got rid of +and - grading, then B) decided that an A one quarter and a B another quarter averaged out to an A, and C) decided since remote teaching started that students would get 50% credit on homework assignments even if they didn’t hand them in. I doubt our GPA’s correlate with college success anymore.
I think elite college admissions is sort of like Quantum Mechanics, i.e. you can’t actually measure anything accurately because the very act of measuring changes the thing you are trying to measure. People are really good at gaming whatever system we can come up with.
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Including standardized tests. The SAT writing section (when the SAT was scored up to 2400) was once considered a better predictor of college performance than the rest of the SAT. But then some test prep companies figured out how to game it and teach test prep students with generally weak English writing skills how to beat the grading rubric and get high scores on it.
(And also how disability accommodation for extra time on SAT/ACT are probably now more correlated with parent income than actual disabilities.)
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It’s nobody’s business if a student has a learning disability. They aren’t required to disclose their health records and it would be a HIPAA violation for testing companies to do it for them.
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A student regularly doing this is hardly going to be planning on applying to a Top Whatever school - and regularly doing this will affect one’s GPA.
The reason it’s been done in places is because remote learning is tough for some kids - tough to connect, tough to have discipline, tough if other things are going on in the house/apartment/room, etc. They don’t need to also take a drastic hit if they miss one or two assignments. Having a homework grade at all is almost always a way to build GPA, not reduce it.
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I agree that certainly some colleges will continue with TO or not give them much consideration. I think things were already trending that direction and I personally do not have an issue with it. I believe CA has already gone to not only TO, but test blind?
Yes, I realize that there are issues with disproportionate amount of students in certain circumstances versus others getting diagnosis/accommodations. However, they do not hand out extra time without a documentation of disability, so I guess my question would be what is going on in the wealthy suburbs that doctors are diagnosing so many with disabilities that result in extra time. I suppose it is because extra time comes with a large variety of disabilities - ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety etc.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is not necessarily as great as you might imagine given they are often in the same room as the kids who have accommodations to have the test questions read to them. It’s a little hard to focus (especially for a kid with ADHD) when the test giver is whispering questions to the kid two seats over. Also, if kids are mentally worn out during a 3 hour exam, imagine 4.5 hours in one sitting.
I believe everyone has to stay to the end so you would still have to have a set end time correct? So does that mean some kids would have to sit staring for 1.5 hours? I am in the ‘a test score does not make the student’ camp because a test score alone does not tell me what is behind it, so would not object to them fading into the sunset.
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Kids in a TAG class at our school can retest to get up to 100 but only 85 in a regular class. Stupid rule.
This! And not just MIT — isn’t this what holistic review is all about? I think it will likely be abundantly clear if applicants are ill-prepared. It stretches admissions to really look at other aspects of the application. I do not believe this will be disastrous at all and will likely mean a class that is more diverse in thought and experience. Add to that the students that have NO opportunity to test — My D22 has had four SAT sessions canceled and is so relieved that some schools already have announced they are TO or test blind next year. I don’t understand how anyone could begrudge that opportunity when these kids have gone through so much
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By flagging, @parentologist simply meant that the test previously noted that extra time was awarded. No medical reason was given.
We know several completely normal kids parent’s who obtained anxiety notes from their doctor to get extra time. At least for me and my kids, all tests created anxiety. That’s why they are called tests. I agree with the poster who said that there should just be one expanded time limit for everyone to eliminate the advantage of those who game the system.
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I have a couple of predictions:
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TO policies are here to stay, whether we agree or disagree with them. Fewer and fewer students will take the standardized tests year after year. The economics of testing will eventually dictate the fate of these tests.
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As GPAs become more important in the evaluation of applicants, high schools across the country will be in a race to inflate grades. They all want their students to have a shot at better colleges. School profiles won’t reflect the current state of grade inflations in the schools. When in a state of rampant inflation, past history is of little use. If you think there’re too many 4.0s, 3.9x’s, you have seen nothing yet.
Students don’t get extra time without an official medical diagnosis, so flagging their records labels them as a person with a physical disability or learning disorder. They’re not required to disclose their medical records and it would be a HIPAA violation if testing companies did so.
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Anxiety is medical.
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The alternative would be a standardized high school curriculum and grading expectations for teachers.
Who typically drives grade inflation? Individual teachers? School administrators? Boards of Ed?
I’m curious because, at our HS, administrators and department heads don’t seem to pay a lot of attention to individual teachers’ grading policies (hence the wide swing in grading styles.)
Do school systems actually send down directives from on high to be more generous (easier) when grading?
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Ours only sent one down for remote learning and it was to help kids adjust without feeling more anxiety. College admissions had exactly 0% influence on the decision.
Yes, our private school made a deliberate effort to inflate grades after parents complained about college admission and a new head arrived from another similar school and told faculty that the grades were way too low. At our local public school, a 4.0 isnt in the top half of the graduating class. So those relying on grades to distinguish applicants are in for a very rude awakening. As are the students when they arrive at college.
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