Learning disabled getting left behind
There’s a girl I know who is a straight-A student in high school. She is poised, bright and organized, the kind who answers the extra-credit questions and keeps color-coded files for every class.
But she reads as slowly as a grade-schooler. Her writing is barely legible. She can’t spell. Like 2.5 million other students in the United States, she is dyslexic.
She is soon going to face the SAT, just as my learning-disabled son will be. Her parents had assumed the purpose of this influential test is to assess a student’s actual knowledge and capabilities. They gathered the required documentation about her dyslexia, which was diagnosed in second grade, and applied for accommodations so her SAT score would reflect as accurately as possible her probability of college success.
The girl requested to have twice the usual time to take the test and a laptop for the essay portion, the same accommodations she has at school. Her teachers, school administrators, doctor and others verified in letters that these accommodations allow her to compete intellectually with non-dyslexic classmates.
But the College Board, which administers the SAT, said no. It granted her time-and-a-half instead, and it won’t let her use a laptop.
Similar stories are playing out with increasing frequency across the country, disability advocates say. New York attorney JoAnne Simon says she has had more clients whose SAT accommodation requests have been rejected in the last two years than she had in the previous 10 years combined.
Brian O’Reilly of the College Board says the challenge is to keep the test as standardized as possible, offering the same questions in the same time span to all students. The board contracts with outside psychologists to review the accommodations requests. Sometimes their conclusions differ from what parents think the student needs.
This suggests that at least some rejections are related to the myth that kids are trying to “game” the system by claiming to have learning disabilities. No one seems to have actual numbers, other than this: The College Board’s approvals for accommodations have tripled since 1987. That’s the number you hear bandied about.
And it’s true. The percentage of students receiving accommodations has increased from half a percent to less than 2 percent. Considering that about 10 percent of the student population has diagnosed learning disabilities, the number receiving accommodations seems too low rather than too high.
Still, the gaming myth has been repeated so often everyone assumes it is true. No matter that research indicates that scores for non-LD kids go up only 4 or 5 points with unlimited time on the SAT while the scores for LD kids go up 40 or 50 points. No matter that anyone who can finish the test in three hours and 45 minutes, the standard time, is not all that interested in sitting there for another three just because he can.
Here’s the sad, dumb irony. By denying learning-disabled students a fair opportunity to demonstrate what they really know, the board is undermining the test’s integrity. It essentially is doing on purpose what it did by accident to 4,000 tests last fall: It is delivering inaccurate test scores to colleges and universities. The scores don’t reflect what LD students really know.
I’m not convinced the SAT is the best indicator of college success, but for now it’s a fact of life for high-school students. Learning-disabled students aren’t looking for an easy way out. They’re looking for a fair way in. Unless the College Board levels the playing field for them, the SAT is a standardized test that tests nothing more than a student’s ability to take a standardized test.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is [email protected].