Oh man, those unscrupulous parents ruin things for everyone, most of all, their own children.
It's been a FLOOD of 'extra time' requests since that time, too.
Estimates there are not easy to come by, but the last ones that I saw were from 2007 or 2006 and suggested that there had been a 75%
increase in the numbers of students testing with extra time.
How much of that is legitimate is anyone's guess-- but the fact that College Board is estimated to only approve about half (at most) of applicants for SSD accommodations probably says something.
The VAST majority of applicants are seeking extra time.
Extended Time and other Accommodations on the SAT and ACT More on this particular topic:
Paula Kuebler, Executive Director of the College Board’s Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), said that in 2004 over 55,000 students received special accommodations on the College Board’s standardized tests.
In 2005 the College Board received the greatest number of applications for SAT accommodations in its history. In the same year, the College Board did an abrupt “about face”. It not only did not increase the number of accommodations granted but also reversed a 20+ year trend by offering significantly fewer allowances for accommodation than it had in previous years, turning down tens of thousands of requests.
and tellingly, why the turnaround--
1) The flag is gone
Some opportunists saw the removal of the asterisk as an opportunity to gain the advantage of extra time without the potential stigma of their tests being “flagged.” Many more students applied and were granted accommodations in 2004 than in previous years. The scores of non-standard test-takers began to rise: in 2004 verbal scores among students with accommodation jumped 8 points and math scores among the same population jumped 7 points. This alarmed the College Board and indicated that the pool of students applying for accommodation was apparently changing.
2) The curve is wrong
Hypothetically, if you distributed the scores of all students sitting for the SAT on a curve, with or without accommodation, it should approximate the normal curve (a.k.a. the “bell-curve”). When the College Board plotted the 2005 results of students taking the test with accommodations, the results yielded not a bell-curve but rather a bi-modal distribution (meaning the distribution was top and bottom heavy with a disproportionate number of low scoring and high scoring students rather than a tendency toward the mean). This greatly alarmed the College Board that the population of students receiving accommodation did not mirror the rest of the population.
Under the ADA model, to get accommodation a student must demonstrate how his/her daily academic functioning is impaired. This is the new gold standard: evidence of functional impairment. According to the ADA, what may be a relative weakness may not indicate a true disability. Under this new ADA model, requests for accommodation for attention deficit disorders and many other types of disabilities are being denied left and right.
This seems pretty fair, at least to me. That is, if you're unimpaired relative to your peers (and hey, that IS the catch if you're 2e, right?) then you probably don't strictly NEED accommodations. But the problem is when you try to apply this standard to things which are episodic and life-threatening-- that is, medical conditions which produce rapid, profound impairment unexpectedly.
Because when the condition isn't ACTIVE, there
is no functional impairment. And when it is, then survival and treatment is all that matters. It's difficult that College Board has placed the two things in the same 'hopper' for evaluation. Because really, a board which is intended to be expert at parsing accommodations for LD can't possibly be competent to do so for complex medical management cases as well. And the variation in severity in things like lupus, responses to chemotherapy agents, food allergy, diabetes, seizure disorders, etc. means that one-size-fits-most winds up being suitable for only a tiny fraction of those who have needs that are non-negotiable.
