<p>My son is entitled to accommodations for his SAT. He gets extra time and may use a computer.</p>
<p>He was signed up for yesterday's administration. We're homeschoolers, so we had to search around to find a school to administer the test to him. Finally we called the district and they, supposedly, set everything up. A district spokeswoman called me this week. She told me what site he was to go to, what room he was to go to, and what person would be administering the test in that room. She assured me that his materials had arrived at the school and all was ready.</p>
<p>We arrived promptly at 7:30 for the 8:00 test. I asked the administrator-- Mr. X, the man we'd been told would be there--to see the computer my son would be using. I got a blank look. There was no computer. My son's name was not on the list. There were no materials for him.</p>
<p>Seething inside, I asked Mr. X to call the College Board. After about ten minutes on the phone, while I paced around nervously, getting madder and madder, he managed to straighten everything out. They set up a computer for him and he was able to take the test as planned.</p>
<p>My son is resilient and unflappable. He thinks he did well.
But every time I have to deal with the College Board it's one disaster after another, requiring dozens of phone calls. Why can't they make this simple?</p>
<p>From my experience, these problems don't usually rest with the college board. First of all, the College Board only writes the questions. ETS oversees the administration of the test. Even then, the group ultimately responsible for getting the materials ready was the school district. It's a bureaucracy going from the multiple levels of the school district to ETS. I have been fortunate that one of the guidance counselors at my HS happens to be an SSD coordinator and therefore knows everything I require. Also, I guess one of my accommodations requires I get arranged testing, so for two tests I have taken I was the only one taking it that day with him. There was one other where there were three other disabled students. Getting out of the regular test center environment must also help.</p>
<p>dvm258's experience is similar to mine. A teacher or SpEd person or guidance counselor is in charge. For the AP Chemistry exam, there was a difference of opinion between the teacher who was administering the exam and me on how to apply the College Board's accommodations. It turns out that the teacher was correct but that the effect was not in line with what the College Board had agreed to achieve. I called the College Board and they faxed a change to the teacher and all was well.</p>
<p>I would consider calling in advance to find out who is going to be responsible and talking to them to make sure there are no problems.</p>
<p>Call in advance? Good grief, I called in advance many times. They specifically called me a few days before the test <em>and assured me that they had received Fang Jr's materials and all was set up.</em></p>
<p>Sorry, I wasn't clear enough, Cardinal. You likely did this, but what I meant was get the actual person who was going to be monitoring the test and make sure that he/she shared an understanding with you of what would be done. That goes beyond having the materials. I assume in general that the instructions filtering down to the person doing the actual work have been garbled or have not gotten through -- or that they have read but not understood things -- and I very respectfully go through each step with them if I can. Again, you may have done this, but as advice for others facing this, that's what I would do.</p>
<p>Shawbridge, excellent advice. It's hard for us to talk to the actual people at the site, because we're homeschoolers and have no connection with the school. For schooled students, it's easier; the SAT with accommodations are offered at their school by personnel of their school that they likely already know. </p>
<p>For the next round, I'm going to make sure to talk to the actual person. Actually I'm hoping that Fang Jr did well enough this time that he doesn't have to take the test again.</p>
<p>Good luck to Fang, Jr. We were in the other situation as my son is partially in the school and partially homeschooling. Because he is in the school, his SpEd caseworker gave me the name of the teacher in charge of monitoring the test in question (neither my son nor I had met him) and I emailed him, which uncovered the confusion.</p>