So-- my DD's charter school is not an "approved testing center" and it wouldn't matter if it were, since she's a virtual school student who lives fairly far from that school's offices.

To take exams through the College Board, she has been approved for accommodations by them-- which is a labyrinthine and Herculean feat all on its own when it comes to outside-the-box disabilities, quite frankly.

You get to choose from a short "menu" of accommodations, basically. In other words, if it's about a medical condition that needs management so that a medical crisis isn't triggered by the test environment...

your only legitimate choice is "breaks as needed."

Yup. The rest, you get to negotiate with the test center and proctors on your own. Every.single.time. Presumably, they have a vested interest in not incurring an 'exception' that results in an ambulance transport as much as the student and his/her family.


But the catch is that if your disabling condition is significant enough that you are homeschooling, a virtual school student, or placed OOD?

Your local school DOES NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT YOU for testing. That's right. You have to BEG for a seat.

Yes, College Board has confirmed this.


Now, our local (districted) high school testing counselor last fall for the PSAT was delightful. She immediately understood that basically, we COULD be a PITA every single day of her working life-- but that this, really, was pretty much the ONLY time we'd asked for a thing, and wow, aren't WE nice for being so understanding that a parent basically just SITS right outside the door for the test and all...

but the SAT isn't being offered at THAT local school.

Nope. We have one choice within fifty miles of us. THIS school counselor is a whole different ball of wax. Passive-aggressive, sullen, and ever-so-slightly obstructionist.

She won't give us an answer re: the June SAT. This is the last opportunity for my DD to take the SAT this year-- her junior year, mind.

So I've been waiting for HER to contact College Board to find out what she needs to do, determine what THEY will do, all that stuff.

She calls me back a bit after SEVEN this morning... and immediately announces that while she tried to call yesterday, our land line "was busy" and so she figured (and the tone is important here) she would "wake you up this morning first thing." Well, mission accomplished-- luckily I wake up instantaneously and I'm fully operational in seconds. So she missed her clearly intended advantage on that score.

She informed me of several jaw-dropping things during this conversation--

she has a "window" that DD can be tested during-- and we basically have no input into it. So if she opts to test DD at 3:30 AM on June 1, that's what we'll get.

She CAN refuse to seat my DD. She checked. (she was very pleased with herself about that)

She asked about my DD's PSAT scores. I said "top 50K-- we don't really know beyond that at this point in time." When pressed, she informed me (with apparent malicious glee??) that "212 is only going to be commended. Definitely NOT MNSF."

I was frankly kind of horrified by this entire line of questioning from her. She was clearly determining whether or not my DD is a 'high-enough' achieving student to be WORTH HER TIME in accommodating her.

WOW.

It's either that or something even LESS savory that just now occurs to me-- that she is looking to meet the letter of my DD's accommodations in such a stressful manner that she sabotages her scores.

Yikes.

Anyway. She then told me (when I suggested that we expect DD to test very well and probably only take the SAT this one time) that indeed, once certainly OUGHT to be plenty for this nonsense of accommodating my child.



WOW. So if my DD happened, instead of a high-flying PG kidlet, to be a student with multiple disabilities who was hoping to score well enough to make the cut at the local regional state college...

what? THAT wouldn't be "worth it" to her??

Ugh. I'm just incensed by this entire process. I hate the fact that College Board feels that they are completely above the law about this. It's not even REMOTELY possible that this is functionally compliant with ADA/ADAA given how colleges use the scores on their tests.

So... ACT??

is driving further away an option? I would probably rather do that than take my chances with this one

Sending you a PM.

Same basic process in terms of advocacy.

It's maddening. Getting approval took 13 WEEKS after we submitted a MOUNTAIN of documentation/justification to them. We were not approved for "individual testing" even so.



In other words, we opted to only go through it once, and with the agency that was more normative locally and controlled MORE of the tests, since the approval carries forward in time.

In other words, she (theoretically) could use the SSD # she has to get accommodations for AP exams, SAT, GRE, etc.

Theoretically.


I'm probably not going to be able to help myself-- at SOME point I am going to say to this woman "Thanks SO much for helping us-- aren't you glad that we aren't your problem every day??"

Horrible and outrageous. Are they so above the law? There's no oversight, no one to complain to?

I'm sorry, I don't know what to say. Some people just shouldn't be around young people.

HK, I think you're an expert at this stuff, but if it were me and my kid I would find another location (even if one that required an overnight trip) and once that was taken care of (maybe even after the test) complain politely but insistently to the College Board about this. Kids (and their families) should not have to go to great lengths to find a testing site willing to accommodate testing, and the College Board shouldn't be encouraging this/allowing it to happen. DD's teacher last year was similarly passive-aggressive, and if this person is being so open about their negative feelings I would only worry about it getting even worse down the road--including 'forgetting' some of the accommodations, etc., or making them really unworkable. I can't understand why some people are so nasty. Sorry you and your DD are having to deal with this, and I hope you can find a good solution.

College Board knows. They told me that it just isn't their problem.

They don't HAVE to care, basically.

Yeah, it is outrageous. Particularly since mechanistically, it costs a sponsoring school NOTHING to host my child-- College Board covers the cost of the additional proctor.

I've been told by College Board that they can "give me a case #" if the local school refuses her a seat. The thing is, the local person hasn't done that. I don't THINK that she intends to-- unless she decides in the blink of an eye that she's tired of trying to find one more proctor, and in that case, we will have little warning that she's 'refused' DD until it happens. To be fair, I think that she is trying to find one. She's just got little motivation.

Given how long it took to get resolution on two requested accommodations, also, there's no way that College Board would/could do anything about it in time for that June date.

I'm VERY tempted to complain to DOJ about them. VERY.

I really just kind of posted this as a head's up-- I know that there are other parents here in a similar situation, needing accommodations and needing (though they may not yet know it) largesse from a school that feels it owes our kids nothing.


These big test companies are a law unto themselves-- and believe me, they DEFINITELY see things that way. It isn't that they don't know that they are obligated to kids with disabilities. They know. They also know that an individual family has got exactly zero leverage with them, and so the attitude is "Yeah? So? Bummer for you... but what are you going to do about it?" (said with considerable lassitude and ennui).

Soooo.. just curious... this is a bit of a spin-off to this thread, but fwiw we were planning to have ds take the SAT/ACT through one of the talent searches... if you take the SAT/ACT through a talent search are you testing in a school district location? Does my question even make sense? I'd somewhat assumed ds would be taking the test at the same proctored testing center where he took his earlier talent search tests.. and it's a private center, independent of the school district.

HK, it makes my head spin to read your post. ARGH! It seems like in the end, the time and effort and cost it would take for the people responsible for this to simply be nice and do the right (and legal) thing would be much less than the effort they are putting into fighting.

polarbear

My kids took the SAT through NUMATS in Dec. 2012. Their test center was the high school in our neighborhood. My kids were the *only* talent search students there - the rest were older students who had signed up through College Board.

If you live in an area where there is a "testing center" then some of College Board's tests can be taken there-- under SOME testing requirements in terms of accommodations, that is.

It's just that if you need some accommodations, they can ONLY be taken "school based" and if you need that and you don't have a "home" school that is a testing site, then the onus is on YOU to find your kid a seat, and the catch is that no school is obligated to seat them.

Well, it all ties in nicely to my assertions that everyone in my town has met the helicopter parent from hell, though. This is someone who has obviously been highly sensitized in the past and has become nasty and defensive as a result.

I truly hope that we never, ever, ever have to deal with her after this, too.

Try to imagine a situation where she would need some help from you

For what it's worth, I think one could write a kick-ass college admission essay about discrimination in SAT accommodations.

LOL-- Elizabeth, my DD already wrote one of those in 8th grade re: the MANY, lifelong benefits conferred upon those who are eligible for military service, and 100% denied to anyone who is ineligible-- namely, highly capable persons who have disabling conditions. There's no other way to get some of those benefits, and they are substantial. She discovered that not all nations treat service this way, either.





I'm having the best luck imagining her being spanked in front of a parent audience-- with a rolled up copy of the full text of ADAA.

I'm not a very nice person, as it happens. I know this.

And DD's school wondered at our reluctance to have her sit for AP tests...

this-- THIS is why DD didn't participate in talent searches when she was 7-10 yo. It's because it is so crazy-hard to get accommodations that make it reasonably safe for her to test.

As self-appointed defender of standardized tests, let me point out that making it difficult to get accommodations may be part of an unstated policy to reduce fraud, which is a problem for a high-stakes test. Disability advocates forced the College Board to stop flagging tests given under special circumstances. People were worried in 2002 that this change encourages the unscrupulous, as the article below discusses.

I know this does not apply to HK and hope she is able to iron out the problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/15/us/abuse-feared-as-sat-test-changes-disability-policy.html
Abuse Feared as SAT Test Changes Disability Policy
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
Published: July 15, 2002
The College Board has agreed to stop flagging the scores of disabled students who take the SAT under special conditions, such as extra time, in a legal settlement that could send tremors through the college admissions process.

About 2 percent of the two million high school students who take SAT's each year get some accommodations -- almost always including extra time -- because of their documented disabilities. To make sure college admission boards know this, the College Board marks these tests with a notation that says, ''Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions.''

But after September 2003, the College Board will no longer flag the disabled students' scores, a practice that advocates for the disabled have long denounced as stigmatizing and discriminatory. Without the notations, colleges will now have no way of knowing if an applicant took the test under normal conditions, or used a computer, worked in a separate quiet room, and had four and a half hours for the three-hour test.


High school guidance counselors said the elimination of flagging could set off a wave of new applications for accommodations, including some from students without real disabilities.

Although the settlement arose from litigation by a man with a physical disability, most of those who are accommodated have attention deficit problems or learning disabilities like dyslexia, a reading disorder.

''It's the right thing to do, but it's going to have very negative ramifications,'' said Brad MacGowan, a guidance counselor at Newton North High School, in an affluent suburb of Boston. ''In a perfect world, if students really need extended time to do as well as they can on a test, they should not have it flagged. But it's that flag, that asterisk, that helps cut down on abuse. This will open the floodgates to families that think they can beat the system by buying a diagnosis, and getting their kid extra time.''

Oh man, those unscrupulous parents ruin things for everyone, most of all, their own children.

Bostonian is absolutely correct-- and even disability advocates have expressed some concern over the time issue-- because that DOES fundamentally alter the assessment, and it does so even for those students who are non-disabled, making it very much unlike other accommodations. That is, this particular accommodation is one that MOST non-disabled students would be quite happy to have, and it would improve their scores in at least some subsections. The "timed" aspect of the test IS part of the test. I have no problem with offering the necessary time accommodation to students who really need it, of course-- slow processing speeds, dysgraphia, etc. all make that necessary to level the playing field. But it does open the door for fraudulent application for accommodations, too, and it probably DOES mean that some kids are getting mommy and daddy to purchase them accommodations.

The thing is, though... the crazy-making thing, I mean, is that they make the process of getting approval so unbelievably hard for everyone ELSE. That one makes no sense whatsoever.

There is NO WAY that "_______-- control of the environment to avoid triggering _______ (medical condition)" is any kind of advantage to non-disabled test-takers. Reducing distractions for an ADD student hardly seems like something every test-taker would even CARE about.

Seriously. That's like arguing that braille is an "unfair advantage" and that those kids wanting it are probably faking it to gain unfair advantage.

I understand the additional scrutiny re: extra time, particularly in people who have a very recent diagnosis. That's just plain suspicious, and I think everyone can see why.

But to say that a kid with dysgraphia since school entry wanting a computer for the essay is "unfair" or "suspect" is just insane.

And for people with medically-based disabling conditions, the entire system is convoluted and nonsensical in the extreme. MOST of those applications could be rubber-stamped, the provisions asked make so much sense and offer no possible, conceivable advantage to a non-disabled student.

So much of the documentation requested is plainly "does not apply" to anyone without a LD diagnosis. What, pray tell, is a neuropsych evaluation supposed to offer in determining which accommodations a student with cerebral palsy, severe RA, or active lupus "really needs" in order to take an AP test, anyway?

Oh, right-- they don't.

The most aggravating thing of all is that you ask for what YOU NEED at your peril if you are not applying because of LD (or something related) and asking for extra time.

You'd better make sure that you use the phrases that they recognize, because the default answer is "NO." Anything off the 'menu?' No again.

And really, again, this makes NO sense. A child with debilitating migraines triggered by fluorescent lighting SHOULD be able to specify "test environment must use natural or incandescent lighting sources only" right?

Not so. That child needs to request the same thing that mine does. "Breaks as needed." You know, to manage the condition.

It has NOTHING to do with the provisions written into a child's IEP or 504 plan. College Board states openly that they feel that they are under ZERO obligation to honor those provisions, and completely free to determine which of them are "really" necessary. Without any real appeal process to speak of, I might add.

You can always reapply with new data and supporting documentation, of course.

We dotted every i and scrupulously followed their instructions to the letter in every way that we possibly could-- and were STILL denied "one on one testing" as an accommodation. Even though we made it clear that ANY person in that testing room may pose a risk of fatality-- within a few minutes-- to my daughter, and documented her sensitivity and medical history to support that assertion. The school backed us (what about homeschooled students like my dd?? Good lord.) our specialist physician backed us (and he's nationally known). And we still were told that we were asking for what she didn't really need.

It's mind boggling.

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:


and tellingly, why the turnaround--




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.

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

Yes, exactly.

The problem is that a system in which "testing with no accommodations" is a Gaussian distribution and in which "testing with accommodations" is BI-modal...

there is a problem with what a particular result means-- because those two cohorts are not mirror images of one another, and to compare scores across that divide, they must be.

That is to say that I understand completely why College Board has made it hard-hard-hard to get accommodations (extra time), but is ignoring the fact that they didn't NEED to do this for people who aren't seeking that particular accommodation. The other thing is that they are avoiding the ONE thing that could put a stop to this nonsense for real... and that is asking about household incomes.

{sigh} It'll never happen, of course, but the documentation ought to be VERY significant for that highest SES group in particular... since they are the only group which has been repeatedly implicated in fraudulent practices with respect to College Board's tests. I realize that sounds harsh, and frankly, my household might well be caught in such a net, but I am so fine with that if it means that it's fairer and easier for families making half what we do to simply get their kids the accommodations that they NEED in order to take the SAT on a level playing field. {SIGH}

The College Board does not look at grades.

Here is the information I had to give the College Board when asking for accommodations for my homeschooled son:

--Identifying information
--The name of diagnosed disability
--The requested accommodations (in his case, double time for reading, written language expression, and math calculations; a word processor for essays; small group testing; and writing answers in the test booklet instead of filling in a bubble sheet)
--The documentation from the person who diagnosed the disability

None of this contained anything about his grades or what sort of student he is.

He got all of the accommodations that we requested except for the double time. They gave him time and a half instead.

Right-- because the committee that makes decisions about accommodations could see that everything on your wish list matched everything on their "menu" for the diagnosis, which they have experience with.

If you're in a situation where you have multiple disabilities, or if your disability is unusually severe, then you have trouble. Often a lot of trouble.

Also-- physical disabilities, they simply do NOT understand. Nor will they admit that they don't. I was told not to worry... that committee is "an expert on ALL disabilities."

(Yes, seriously.)

Back to the original post, though-- Kai and I both face the problem of finding a local educational agency that will seat our kids to test with their accommodations.

THAT, College Board has said they won't help us with. It's up to us to convince/persuade/grovel/plead to make it so.

Complete shot in the dark, but I wonder if you contact a local disability rights group and ask if they have a school they can recommend? Give them a two second rundown on your situation and tell them you're looking for a sympathetic school/principal/counselor that can assist you. Maybe one will be immediately obvious to them, or they'll spring to action and help find a situation that works for her.

I think it's completely discriminatory that it's up to YOU to figure out who will agree to let her test there. Not everyone fits in the box, it's that simple. You would think there would be a procedure for the "what if"s. I'm sorry, I know how emotionally and physically exhausting a fight like this can be.

When requesting extended time you do need to provide recent achievement testing like the WJ or WIAT showing a significant discrepancy btwn untimed and fluency (timed) sections as well as IQ scores showing a processing speed difference from other subtests and a diagnosis that explains the cause of the discrepancy. The achievement and IQ scores will probably make it pretty clear that the kid is gifted.

Absolutely. But being gifted doesn't always equate with stellar grades, especially for a 2E kid.

I want to thank all of you for discussing and posting about this. I don't know what we will be needing when our time comes as we still have much to sort out but this discussion has been truly enlightening to read. I really appreciate the heads up about what may be ahead. I will be hoping and praying that somehow the efforts of those of you ahead of us break through the barricades at College Board and bring about the change that is clearly needed. No child, no family should be put through that wringer to get safe and appropriate testing for college. Thanks for sharing your struggles so openly.

Absolutely. I'm a big believer in paying it forward. I've learned from others over the years, so I try to share as much as I can.

Good news-- Ms. Cranky Stressbunny has found us a proctor for DD-- so she gets to take the SAT!! YAY!!


Of course, she could still mess with us by tweaking the time to something outrageous... but I think it will be okay. WHEW!!

w00t! I'm glad it's working out.