Surprise Meter Reads 0
The New York Times
reports that, since the
College Board decided to cease marking the reports of students who recieve un-timed tests, there has been a flurry of 11th and 12th graders seeking classification as learning disabled. Students with this classificiation are entitled to special services such as un-timed standardized tests. These tests -- the SAT, SAT IIs, PSAT, AP, etc. -- are the backbone of American college applications and can make or break an application. All are administered by the College Board, a private organization (with the exception of certain state-specific tests, like the NY Regents Exams, which are run by state school boards).
There are two aspects to this issue: the right to conceal a learning disability from colleges, and the possibility for abuse. The Times reports:
The asterisk indicating that extended time and other accommodations were made to the test-takers will disappear from student records a year from now and will be removed retroactively from tests taken previously. That means 30,000 students, or 2 percent of the 1.3 million high school seniors who sit for the College Boards each year, will submit scores to colleges as if they had been tested under the same conditions as everyone else.
This change, part of the settlement of a 1999 lawsuit, has been hailed by disability rights groups and many educators who see unflagged, extended-time testing as a way to level the playing field for those with learning disorders.
Time is a
really big deal on these tests. The SAT II American History exam, for example, has approximately 85 multiple choice questions in 60 minutes. One can imagine the difference 15 minutes would make, let along one hour. The SAT II Writing examination contains an essay, for which one is usually alloted 20 minutes. Can you imagine the obvious differences between an essay written in 20 minutes and one written in 45 minutes?
Sending scores from students who recieved this huge boon unmarked is a disservice to all 1.3 million students taking the test. Not only it is more than slightly unfair to those who took the tests within the proscribed time, but it discredits the image of the entire battery of tests. What is the point of these tests? To find the "diamond in the rough" students who weren't lucky enough to attend a decent high school? To give college admissions officers the ability to compare two students from different schools? Or to hide critical information about a prospective student in the interest of giving them an equal shot at acceptance?
The College Board would like to convince you of all three. Obviously the three goals are conflicting, and cannot therefore all be true. And what is the use of test whose purpose no one really knows? Sure, it's still great to tell Harvard that you got a 1550 (the SAT is out of 1600), but what that actually means is becoming more and more unclear.
Abuse of the system is one of the primary culprits in the dissolution of the SAT's worth:
"This further privileges the privileged," said Jane Brown, the vice president who oversees admissions at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., which is in the second year of a five-year research project on the effect of making the tests optional. "You have to be able to afford a diagnosis."
Dr. Alan Wachtel, a New York City psychiatrist with a specialty in attention deficit disorder, said it was "regrettably true" that some parents bid for the services of "hired guns." Their behavior contributed to an adversarial attitude in certain schools, he said, where he is sometimes asked, "What are the parents paying you to say this?"
I can imagine the high schools from which Dr. Wachtel's patients come. Dalton, Nightingale-Bamford, Dwight, Spence, Brearley, Trinity...anyone familiar with these schools must be rolling their eyes in agreement. The fact that the College Board continually overlooks these schools -- and their counterparts in other cities -- shows that it regretfully out of touch with the reality of college admissions. Numerically, these schools are minnows in the vast seas of American high schools, but these schools are quite significant. I believe all of them have Ivy attendance rates of 30% or higher. And that's not including the Ivy-equivalents of Amherst, MIT, CalTech, Williams, U of Chicago, Michigan. And yet, despite knowing this, the College Board takes measures that
increase the opportunity for these snobbish Manhattanites to abuse it.
No one benefits from this change in policy.
No one. To be fair, there are students who have a legitimate learning difficulty for whom that extra time would be a great boon. And, in reality, the ability to fill lots of little bubbles really quickly isn't a life skill: those students can get jobs that will fit their strengths and weaknesses. But still, shouldn't colleges know of this? If the extra time allotted to them allowed them to excell on the tests, their grades are high, their intellect obviously on par with the other applicants, what college officer is going to tell them that a genetic disorder with which the student has obviously coped well with is going to force the college to reject the student? Very few.
However, opening the door for further abuse (indeed, many students were diagnosed with ADD in 10th grade even when the reports were still marked) is egregiously irresponsible of the College Board, and runs counter to their efforts to
rehabilite the public image of the SAT. For each of the 30,000 kids who it helps (and I estimate at least 8,000 of those students has only be recently placed on Ritalin), it hurts the rest of the 3.1 million who are forced to take a test that means less and less each time it is modified in the name of equality.
