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<p>True, I admit that Caltech’s system isn’t exactly as the hypothetical one I described, but I would still argue that their time limits are very much not intended to enforce a “faster==better” result.</p>
<p>Consolation, I think I didn’t explain my thought well. What I meant to say was that if her testing is old, the lawsuit makes sense because it means that Princeton is disputing the disability-- which is, to some degree, part of what Calmom is arguing: that the student in question may not have a disability that rises to the level needing accommodations. I agree that that is a possibility since we just don’t have that info and I agree with Calmom that the accommodations offered only seem to address the ADD and, possibly, the physical disorder, but not the language or expressive writing disabilities. My opinion was based on the theory (again, because we don’t know) that the student’s testing is up-to-date and she was tested and those diagnosis were reaffirmed recently. I only write that to try to understand where the complaint is coming from and because every college I dealt with said they would require very recent testing-- I know some said within a year-- and I did come up against the attitude shawbridge is discussing. (So much so that my child with a physical disability has chosen not to disclose. But, as I said, the school supported a professor’s decision to give her a 0 on something that was done while she was hospitalized-- even though the school’s health office sent her to the hospital.) If the testing of the P student was recent, those accommodations do not speak to those conditions. But, again, I do think a student who is classified with an expressive/receptive disorder would have a hard time being a competitive applicant to Princeton. And, of course, you’re right: it <em>could</em> always be an attorney trying to shoehorn old diagnosis in. </p>
<p>Thank you Calmom for that thorough explanation on the discrepancy model and ADA/IEP. It’s particularly interesting to me since my school district has not chosen to see it that way. High iq kids with lds under the discrepancy model are classified here with 504s under ADA (if they’re classified at all). The thinking seems to be that the ld is a disability but they don’t want to give the child an IEP because that would require compensatory services-- which they won’t give because the student is close enough to average.</p>
<p>Interesting arguments. Reminds me of the give-and-take you hear in excerpts of Supreme Court hearings. :)</p>
<p>On finding your niche–before diagnoses of LDs and before the ADA, smart kids who couldn’t read or write adequately often ended up (if they were properly guided/mentored) doing work with their hands. Rebuilding auto engines or being a dental hygienist. And even now, it is so common that engineers are not good writers, that if you CAN write, you’re golden.</p>
<p>Of course we’re better off today than when brilliant kids ended up as auto mechanics, but sometimes the alternative was dropping out of college and not having any job skills, or not even finishing HS. Many of the prison population, I am given to understand, are people who have LDs and were NOT helped to achieve to their abilities.</p>
<p>Edit: Not denigrating those who work with their hands! I’d rather see a happy and capable carpenter than an incompetent financial advisor!!! For example.</p>
<p>The discrepency model is pretty much disfavored and has no scientific support in any case. (Advances in brain science and genetics have shown that the LD’s have the same underlying cause and pattern no matter what the measured IQ is – for example, high IQ dyslexics and low IQ dyslexics show the same pattern of phonological weaknesses.) </p>
<p>It is used more often to deny services than to grant them – its hard to get an accurate IQ on a kid with a significant LD, so very often the kids with the greatest need are denied services because they don’t score high enough on an IQ test. And giving accommodations to a high IQ kid without services to address the LD is just passing the problem along – those kids might be the ones who would do very well with minimal intervention. If IQ reflects potential – the rationale behind the discrepency model, then it makes no sense to deny the higher IQ students the benefit of specialized tutoring and support.</p>
<p>What bothers me about the whole focus on speed or extended time is that there are many students without diagnosed learning disabilities who would benefit from more time. I don’t think its really fair that the kid with the formal diagnosis gets extra time, and a kid sitting next to her in the exam room who just needs more time to organize her thoughts and put her ideas on paper suffers the consequences of the time limits. I don’t believe in the notion of IQ as a measure of some type of intellectual worth in any case – that is… I don’t like the idea that if a kid scores 140 on an IQ test, she might qualify as having an LD under the discrepancy model and get extra time-- but a kid who scores 120 on the same IQ test and works at the same speed doesn’t get extra time because they are somehow deemed less worthy of help. </p>
<p>So while I don’t agree with jbusc that the exam context has nothing to do academic quality, I do agree with the idea that if some students get extra time, in fairness every student should be given whatever time he or she needs. </p>
<p>The reason I don’t agree with the academic quality argument is that I felt that I changed - and essentially became more capable intellectually – when put through the academic wringer of a rigorous law school. I’ve seen the same intellectual changes in my daughter with her undergraduate work – and part of my experience is that my ability to read, analyze and process information sped up under the pressure. There is some value in exercising the brain intensively over a sustained period of time. (Neuroscience provides evidence of that as well). </p>
<p>I honestly don’t know what the academic environment is like at Princeton, so I can’t answer jbuc’s question. My law school was a pressure cooker and my daughter’s college is a pressure cooker – my undergrad, and my son’s undergrad, was not. There’s nothing wrong with an education that is based more on nurturing students in a supportive environment rather than driving them in an intense environment – but that intensity IS part of what makes the reputation of schools like Chicago or MIT. And again… spending sustained time in such an environment does have an impact on intellectual functioning. So the bottom line is that there are different methodological and pedagogical philosophies. I can’t say which is best… but I’d rather see a world in which students can choose between Chicago or MIT or schools like Brown and Hampshire, than one in which either set of schools was pushed to be more like the other.</p>
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<p>To be fair, I was presenting a bit of a false dichotomy. I posed the extremal case in order to emphasize my point.</p>
<p>However, I think our messages got mixed. I don’t mean to argue that academic rigor is bad - quite the opposite! Usually I am very much in favor of high standards and pushing students to their max. My university’s freshman writing course is known for being exceptionally rigorous and challenging, entirely with out-of-class work (no exams), and it certainly ran me through the mill.</p>
<p>Instead, I am arguing in favor of academic rigor that does not place undue priority on superficial differences between students. My ultimate argument, independent of everything else, is that a degree/GPA should be reflective of what you know, have learned, or are otherwise capable of intellectually. </p>
<p>To me, in some sense, being fast at exam-taking falls under the same category as being able to take good notes, having good attendance, having a good work ethic…things which contribute to success in college, but aren’t at all the point. A college degree as (say) a certificate of attendance is worthless. Perhaps being fast at exams helps students’ grades, but the system shouldn’t automatically reward those who are, at the expense of others who actually have learned more.</p>
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<p>I agree with this statement. I would guess that Princeton will use some derivative of this to argue their case if it goes to trial. That the inherent style of the school is intrinsic and the young women had choices when she “picked” her college…caveat emptor and all that it encompasses. I’d certainly not want to be standing in a court of law using USNWR as the basis for my college choice.</p>
<p>I’d love to see exams with enough time for everyone to finish. My son was describing an in class essay experience he had recently where a girl in his class manage to fill in two blue books with an essay while he only got one filled. He had plenty more to say, he just couldn’t write that fast. It’s frustrating.</p>
<p>I took a Calculus final one year in college where I finished before the halfway mark. That’s an exam that probably allowed enough time for anyone who knew the material to finish it.</p>
<p>duplicate post</p>
<p>This will probs not go to any kind of trial. It will be settled out of court, and there is probably going to be a big fat confidentiality agreement attached.</p>
<p>“If you answered “no”, then you do not believe that being able to complete an exam in a very short period of time (i.e. 80 minutes in class) is an essential component of a Princeton education.”</p>
<p>In your hypothetical, Princeton elected to make the change. I believe that within reason, Princeton is entitled to decide what’s essential to a Princeton education, so if they wanted to go to take-home exams, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But they haven’t made that change, so I’m taking them at their word that speed IS an essential component.</p>
<p>Some of the published articles do contain some erroneous information. </p>
<p>Princeton’s Disability Service currently serves 199 students. Of these, 110 are getting some kind of accomodation. Of this 110, 75% have a time accomodation–that is about 83 students (not 8 or 9 as stated in one article). Most get 50% more time. The time accomodation is the most frequent accomodation made at Princeton. Other Ivies differ in the percentage of extended time, but they do grant it, and do not plan to stop doing so if it is indicated. There is NO policy to eliminate time accomodations that has been adopted across the Ivy League or at Princeton. Someone has mispoken or been misquoted. From my contact with Dr. Tominey, I believe the media reports sadly misrepresent her office’s mission.</p>
<p>Thank you MomPhD. That’s in line with what I thought. I think that somewhere along the line the plaintiff either misunderstood what she was told and passed that misunderstanding on to her lawyer, or her lawyer put an allegation in a complaint that simply isn’t going to be borne out at trial. The “if it is indicated” part is the crux of the matter – when it comes down to it, I still think this is a case over the provision of documentation to support the accommodations requested.</p>
<p>Yes, and also over the percentage of time accomodation. This is not standard between colleges; for example, Princeton gives 50%; Harvard gives 25% (with a few exceptions for certain LDs) in an attempt at least to be internally consistent. </p>
<p>It is interesting that the reporting of the time accomodation this girl got for the ACT has varied–from 300% (!!!) to 200% (!!). I support accomodation of LDs, but the mutability of a number of the reported “facts” in this case make me wonder about the truth (I keep thinking “truthiness”) of the rest of the story.</p>
<p>Instead of blaming the student, the attorney or the office at Princeton. I am going with the writer of the article got their facts/numbers wrong. Also, I believe SAT and ACT only allow time and a half - I have never heard of anything different in terms of time. The only other option there is is to take it over several days, a section at a time (which indeed might end up being 200% or 300%), but that is reserved usually for students who cannot read and need the test read to them. Of course, I am working with somewhat older information, but my understanding is that is becoming much harder to get accommodations on these tests than it was in the past (when they were flagged). We had several students last year who always take tests extended time and had taken SAT’s in the past with extended time and were, for some reason, denied the accommodation last year.</p>
<p>MomPhD, thanks for the facts on Princeton. Better than I expected, but lots of hoop-jumping likely to get the accommodations.</p>
<p>Modadunn, both the SATs and ACTs do offer the test with double time (i.e., 100% extra time) and spread over multiple days (two). In my conversations with the folks at The College Board, they generally reserve this for kids with physical disabilities like cerebral palsy. Typically for specific learning disabilities like dyslexia, they are only willing to offer time and a half but if they can understand a learning disability as having a physical component, they may offer double time, with the test spread over two days if the test is long. That is how my son took the tests.</p>
<p>I stumbled upon this while googling something else and I find this situation incredibly strange. I am currently a LD student at Stanford and things about this student seem off. </p>
<p>I would assume that the typical LD student at Stanford and the typical LD student at Princeton are pretty similar, so I am just going to speak to my experiences with Stanford since some of them probably apply to this case. For starters, all LD students that I have meet, and I have meet a good number of them, have some extreme compensating factor usually either a strong aptitude for math or writing. From reading these articles, it does not seem as though this girl has she has any real compensating academic factors, or at least if she does have one we were not told about it.</p>
<p>This has also already been touched on, but why on earth is she seeking 100% extended time? I have never heard of anyone getting 100% extend time on anything (except for the previous post). I knew someone in high school with a case autism who still only got 50% extended time on the ACT/SAT, this kid does not belong at college but that is a whole different topic. This article is not showing anything anywhere near serious enough to justify those accommodations. Im my opinion, she is just seeking extra time to put her give here self a leg up on her school work. I recognize that this is a statement is making a lot of assumptions and I do not have full information so feel free to burn me for it. It is just the feel I am getting from this situation.</p>
<p>However, this discussion has seemed to move more towards people at high end universities with learning disabilities and some people seems to have some misconceptions. Most of the misconceptions have been well addressed by other posts but I have some stuff I would like to add. Some people here seem to be confusing the LD kid that sits next to their child in school with the LD student at an Ivy or an Ivy equivalent. In my experience I have noticed found that there are three archetypes for LD students in K-12.</p>
<p>The first is the lazy moocher who works the system to no end. Unfortunately, I have found that in the Special Ed. department this extremely common. Im sure that all of your children have seen this at some point. For the sake of keeping this post as short a possible I wont go into how they work the system, but trust me they do. Let me assure you all that your child did not get rejected by (insert reach school here) while this student was excepted. This kid is probably at home right now mooching off of his parents getting fired from every job that he takes because no employer will deal with his laziness. However, it is important to note that some of these kids may be extremely intelligent, but they just don’t care. In fact, I have meet some people in high school that I think would be perfect candidates for becoming mob bosses who fall into this category. </p>
<p>The second is the kid who works really hard but just doesn’t get it. This kid has an amazing work ethic but at the same time does not have much of an academic aptitude. They get mediocre grades and generally end up going to a lower state school. Again, they are not taking your kids’ spot at their dream school. On an aside, these students often have some other sort of skill, most often it is some sort of artistic gift.</p>
<p>Then there is the third type where the student is academically inclined and cares about academics. This group has been thoroughly described by previous posts. However, it is important to realize that this group makes up an incredibly tiny portion of high school Special Ed students. Odds are that you have not/will never meet a person who has a learning disability and is also able to get into and excel at an elite university. Or at least if you do meet one, you probably wont know that they have a learning disability. We are good at hiding them. So just because you have heard stories from your child about the lazy slackers in Special Ed. don’t assume that all people with learning disabilities fall into the first category.</p>
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<p>No academic factors mentioned, but athletic factors were == All State in soccer.</p>
<p>billysmith, I appreciate your insights, but all school districts are not alike. Where I practice, it takes something akin to an act of God, to get into “special ed”, which could mean a variety of settings ranging from a “non-public school”, complete with a “reflection room”, to a “special day class”, to “resource”, several hours a week, often ending at or near high school. I have NEVER met a kid that actually wanted to be in special ed, although there parents might be another story. </p>
<p>I get to learn about many differnt communties here.</p>
<p>I would guess that this student must be in dire straits at Princeton academically right now, maybe on the verge of flunking out. Otherwise, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to color their college experience with a lawsuit against their own alma mater.</p>
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<p>I am happy to say that I never heard ANY comment from my kid disparaging someone for being in Special Ed or having any learning/attention issues. The only comment I can ever recall him making on the subject at all was that a friend of his was very bright but found it hard to concentrate because of ADD and therefore was taking an extra year in a multiage program with him.</p>