Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Seething at situation re: College Board + LEA

I'm not litigious in any way, but this seems like it's worth filing a lawsuit over. The fact that she needs that testing to get into college, yet they're unwilling to provide a safe testing environment seems criminal. I'm seething, too, just reading about their blithe treatment of your dd's needs.

Oh, it's a common complaint among kids with all kinds of hidden medical disabilities-- seizure disorders, diabetes, etc. You name it. The problem is that most of us don't have any kind of national patient-advocacy group with enough clout to take on College Board.

The only one that did is where you get accommodations for:

breaks as needed
food and medication available


That's right-- that's pretty much the limit of 'medical management' for College Board. It's because ADA threatened them years ago, or so the word on the street goes. Ergo "medical accommodations" are pretty much tailor made for diabetes management.

Because that's who threatened them with a class action over lack of accommodations and their cavalier attitude about it. Still, a good many diabetics give up even trying to get through the process, test with NO accommodations, and just figure "oh well, stress will probably lead to high sugars, not low. Not ideal from a cognitive standpoint, but better than hypoglycemia."

Except that the curve isn't wrong at all.

A bimodal distribution is *exactly* what you would expect of this population. The high scoring students are the ones who know the material and just need some extra time to demonstrate that, and the low scoring ones are the ones who don't know the material or have some other issue that extra time isn't helping.

I am looking at the paperwork I filled out for my son's College Board accommodation request. You can ask for use of a keyboard as the only accommodation.

MoN we are headed down that same path and though we are not there yet, I have been reading closely. For my dysgraphic kid with DCD, an AP essay by hand will look like a 2nd grader wrote it and be about as long. If he could type it, they would be impressed. But I agree, he doesn't need extended time, nor would it be fair to ask for it.

We have already started the path of demanding a 504 from our homeschool charter. They didn't want to do it because he doesn't have any site based classes. I put my foot down and required it for standardized testing JUST so we will have ongoing documentation for more than 3 years. When I mentioned that we needed it so I don't have to battle in the long run, they were suddenly far more understanding and willing to go ahead. So even though our state test has no computer possibility and is multiple choice (this year), he will have individual testing, not bubble his own sheet and have breaks as needed. Just so I have documentation in the long run. It is absurd that parents have to plan 4+years in advance just to get the kid to be able to demonstrate knowledge.

But the issue is... where were the kids whose scores were in the middle, then? THAT is what was concerning. Not that some kids were high scoring, which as you say is entirely expected. But that there were TWO bell curves-- one VERY high, and one very low. Well, as you note, very low could mean that the accommodations aren't appropriate, or that the students simply don't know what is being measured.

But why is everyone else who tested with accommodations scoring over 700 on both reading and math all of a sudden? That was the nature of the concern.

That some of that cohort would is completely understandable. But there should still be more of them scoring toward the mean than the tails-- assuming that the test norms the same way with and without accommodations, which is the entire premise of the asterisk going away.

What the College Board feared that it meant instead-- and this is a perfectly valid assumption based on the data available both in College Board's own stats and also in the California study of THEIR cohort... is that as many as 20% of those kids are using accommodations that they don't really need, for a diagnosis that they probably don't really have.

A disproportionate number of those high-scorers with accommodations come from private schools, are white, and of high (often very high) SES. They score at something like the upper quartile without accommodations. But WITH extra time, they can elevate their scores by another 10-15 points.

That's nothing like the students who NEED the accommodations, whose scores often rise by 20-30 points, lifting them from the lowest three quartiles into the middle of the distribution.

But it's what (at least potentially) was creating a bimodal distribution rather than a bell curve. You had "one size DOESN'T fit all.. huh" on the one end, and "great kids that just needed a chance" on the rest of the distribution, plus a bump from "going to take every advantage that I can possibly get my hands on" at the top.

Not all kids that need and deserve accommodations are academic superstars. At least, they shouldn't have to be to be "worth" it. (Back to my conversation with the snotty counselor, actually...)

We got kind of the opposite response from our school psych earlier this yr (although, with a lot of pressure, the tune did finally change).

Essentially what we were told was that kids who needed accommodations were just not very able and wouldn't score well on tests with or without the accommodations (i.e. they might go from low scorers to mid scorers at best). I believe that what was said after that was that they may as well just have the kids who need accommodations test without them to see how they do without accommodations b/c kids who need accommodations wouldn't be contenders for things like NMSF either way. The gist I got was that she didn't believe that 2e was a possibility. You are either bright and, therefore, needed no accommodations b/c you can't be both intelligent and disabled, or you are not too bright and there is no point in giving you accommodations b/c you're going to do poorly either way.

The difference in my son's scores is 200+ points (on the SAT scale) when he receives appropriate accommodations.

I'm not denying that there are kids who apply for and get accommodations who don't need them. I'm sure there are. But I'm guessing that a large part of the high scoring group is made up of 2E kids like my son for whom accommodations make that much of a difference, a larger part than the College Board anticipated.

In fact, I bet the average IQ/GAI of kids applying for the extended time accommodation due to learning disabilities is higher than the average IQ/GAI of the kids not applying for accommodations. Possibly much higher.

Oh, probably-- but the fact is that if granting accommodations leads to a different (non-Gaussian) distribution, then the asterisk actually belongs there. It's a matter of norming and statistics. The problem is that if they make it EASY to get accommodations (such that kids in the middle part of the distribution apply for and use them), then the unscrupulous at the higher end (who don't need them but will certainly 'take' what advantage they may) will flock in droves, which is what California suspected was happening there. That top/competitive group was quicker to take advantage than the people who actually NEEDED the accommodation down there in the middle. Unfortunate in the extreme, because there isn't an easy way to sort those two groups.

My statements are not to be interpreted in any way that I think that kids shouldn't have accommodations which improve performance...

they should, obviously. In Kai's case, for example, it is blindingly clear that it's the right thing to do.

But-- those accommodations are WAY different than accommodations which grant basic access to kids with disabling physical conditions. That's not really about elevating scores or not-- it's about "can this kid test or not?"

In the situation where it's about optimizing performance, then kids like my DD ought to be able to dictate under just what conditions they take the test-- because she KNOWS an unsafe environment when she enters it. She shouldn't have to spend those hours drawing off mental energy wondering if she's going to be safe enough for long enough to finish. THAT impairs her performance-- but there's no way that College Board listened to us about that. Or about drugs impairing cognitive performance, and our doc even included research studies to back both.

We'd love to have a way to mitigate those two factors, but we don't. So we know that they depress her performance.

The other thing which is troubling about extra time is that it then raises questions about "how much additional time is merely fair-- and how much is advantage over non-disabled test-takers?" There's no clear answer there, because everyone's disability is somewhat unique. So for SOME kids with ADHD, who luck into a setting with very few distractions, have a great day, etc... that extra time is simply an advantage.

Of course, the answer is to just eliminate the timed part of things, right? Well, no, not really. Because part of the test IS about processing speed. Always has been. The reason that colleges look at these tests is that the nature of a collegiate environment is to place greatly increased demands on students in terms of rate of instruction and volume of output during that compressed timeframe.

Anyway. That's why I have somewhat mixed feelings about additional time as an accommodation. Mostly it's because there are unscrupulous people who are more than willing to do whatever it takes for their special snowflakes to show to best advantage... but also because I'm troubled by the fact that there is no real way to determine just HOW much more time is appropriate for any one individual, or if other accommodations might be better for that person-- such as MoN's child, who probably doesn't need extra time, but DOES need an alternative format.

That doesn't make sense to me - but maybe I don't understand the process yet. We're just in the beginning stages of applying for accommodations from the College Board - but I don't see anywhere in the process that grades are requested. I understand that they are concerned about students falsely claiming disability to get extended time but they require documentation from neuropsychs/drs/etc to document the disability.

I also wonder if the bimodal scores observed with accommodations might indicate that students in the middle (ie, average performing, average IQ) might be passed over and unrecognized when they *need* accommodations. I can see that it's likely students who are on the low end are easily recognizable and diagnosable, and students who are 2e *might* be recognizable as needing accommodations by the time they are in high school because at some point their intelligence shines through + they may have high-IQ high-achieving parents who are on the lookout for what's up when their child doesn't achieve at the level they expect. A child in the middle, otoh, might slip through the cracks. I realize this may seem to fly in the face of all the concerns we read about how 2e children learn to compensate and fall through the cracks, but I suspect that not-so-2e children with LDs also learn how to compensate and/or are perceived to be lower-ability than they are and may in fact slip through the cracks too.

polarbear