While there can be pressure from parents for the evaluator to find/document a disability, the test data/report is reviewed by psychologists at the College Board, and the data/report findings have to support the requested accommodation. And commonly, if the accommodation has not already been in place and used by the student in their school for at a minimum, several months before the request is submitted to CB, its harder to get. And the school counselor, who typically is the one to submit the request to CB, providers the information, t include whether the student has a 504 or IEP, and whether the student qualified for/had/used the requested accommodations . So if a student gets an accommodation they may not legitimately qualify for, there has to be involvement at many levels for this to occur. JMO.
In my state, there was a significant look see at these accommodations which were many many times higher at some of the wealthy public high schools. The state department of education did compliance reviews, and looked at the data. Some of it was less than compelling.
[quote]
From Weston, Conn., to Mercer Island, Wash., word has spread on parenting message boards and in the stands at home games: A federal disability designation known as a 504 plan can help struggling students improve their grades and test scores…
In Weston, where the median household income is $220,000, the rate is 18 percent, eight times that of Danbury, Conn., a city 30 minutes north. In Mercer Island, outside Seattle, where the median household income is $137,000, the number is 14 percent. That is about six times the rate of nearby Federal Way, Wash., where the median income is $65,000.[/quoe]
20% of the kids in my D’s graduating class of 900+ in a rigorous, affluent HS had extended time on standardized tests.
After learning this, coupled with these other factors…
-hearing AOs from test optional schools speak to how they don’t need test scores to determine who will succeed at their school
-Evidently the requirement of some companies that applicants submit SAT tests as an IQ/capability proxy
-Continued money grabs by the testing agencies (collegeboard especially)
…I support the test optional movement, and hope the rate at which colleges make this choice grows unabated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/extra-time-504-sat-act.html
Interesting article on testing accommodations and fairness to both students without resources and to students without a diagnosis. For schools in the top 1% economically 5.8% have a 504 compared to 2.1% in the bottom 20%. Also:
The point is that wealthy students have 504s at much higher rates. 504s lead to accommodations, not just for standardized testing but for schoolwork. That would be reflected in GPAs from test optional kids that got accommodations.
Yes, more parental money means that students who legitimately need accommodations are more likely to get them, and cheaters are more likely to succeed in getting them as well. Students who legitimately need accommodations but come from poor families are less likely to get them.
Perhaps not a surprise that this is another way that parental money has a large influence on the student’s future educational direction (and career direction, if the student tries for jobs where high school SAT scores are asked for).
It may be that the wealthy kids DO deserve accommodations. The point might not be that they don’t deserve them, but that they can afford the testing. Kids with lower incomes or less savvy parents may not know about accommodations and may not be able to avoid extra testing. We all know that public schools often try to deny accommodations that are needed. So next step is private testing and/or lawyer, both of which cost big bucks.
The 20% is within one standard deviation of the mean. If 20% of the population meets the diagnostic criteria, that raises serious questions about the validity of the diagnostic criteria. At that point, you are arguably diagnosing people with a condition, who mathematically fall within the neurotypical spectrum.
Savvyness definitely plays a role. A friend of DD has been in therapy for five+ years, has suffered anxiety the whole time. Whenever her mom (born overseas, now a US citizen) tentatively asked about accomodations, the therapist told the family they weren’t needed. Mom and I talked about it one day. I pointed out that five years of expensive therapy hasn’t been nearly as effective in remedying the kid’s anxiety as a little extra time on some tests might be. That’s a long time to keep an ineffective therapist. As soon as mom suggested that it was time for a change (one way or the other), the therapist changed her tune. The kid now has accomodations, but the results won’t be known until this school year gets underway.
I have always believed and still maintain that ALL students should get double the current time. Eliminate the administrative work and the posturing and fraud by just giving it to everyone.
What does it mean to deserve accommodations? In one sense, that’s a purely legal question: who have the courts said deserve accommodations. In a broader sense, if a kid deserves accommodations because they would benefit from extra time, that applies to almost everyone and you should take brantly’s idea of doubling the time for everyone.
This is bad analysis. Disability is not like height, normally distributed in the population. There’s not a bell-curve of measles or lung cancer, and we have no particular reason to believe there’s a bell-curve of learning disabilities either. People who have dyslexia, for example, have qualitative differences from people who don’t. The incidence of dyslexia is whatever it is; there’s no mean or standard deviation of dyslexianess.
Actually, we do have reason to believe many LDs exist on a bell curve. ADHD is defined by three main traits: all of which fall within a bell curve. Acting without thinking is not like lung cancer where you have it 100% of the time or 0% of the time, more so when applied to teenagers. Executive function disorder, a medical term for being disorganized, exists along a bell curve.
Just chiming in that 504’s offer a wide range of accommodations; extra time is not always part of a 504.
My daughter has a 504 and has testing accommodations with school, College Board and ACT, but none allow her extra time. You can’t just assume everyone with a 504 is getting double time on standardized tests.
The most common accommodation for testing is extra time and a quiet room. But of course not every 504 requires extra time.
It is difficult because there is no diagnostic test for some conditions covered by 504s such as ADD. It is diagnosed by questionnaire and it is not that hard to figure out which answers would lead to an ADD diagnosis (which is a real, potentially debilitating condition). It is on a spectrum so where is the line between needing accommodations and doing OK. Is being able to stay on task something that is measured by the standardized tests? Should the kid with the high IQ and high attention score higher than the kid with the same IQ but low attention.?
Anxiety as well. What is the point at which being anxious is normal and when it is a disability (believe, I have a kid with anxiety so I know it when I see it, but his was not related to testing). Parents with means can tip the scale to a diagnosis that leads to extra time. or other accommodations.
The tests use speed as one aspect of scoring, presumably the student with the faster processing and better understanding of the material will finish more quickly and have higher accuracy.
Double time is rare (common is time and a half). Double time for the SAT takes 2 days, and adds another set of problems for the students and the testing sites.
While ADHD has no formal diagnostic test, typically it is assessed with a combination of questionnaires (parent and teacher) sometimes self report (depending on the age of the client) and associated measures of intellectual, cognitive, memory, alternating and divided attention, organization, executive function, on/off task behavior/distractibility, timed/untimed academic measures, personality/mood screening, etc. Sometimes other things can look like ADHD when the underlying cause may be something else (anxiety, sleep disorders, etc) so the diagnostic testing is a rule out as well as rule in process. With a clearer diagnosis , appropriate recommendations for accommodations can be made
(which might be testing in a quiet room, extra breaks, longer breaks, etc and not necessarily just extra time).