Thanks. I am familiar with the update.
Neither ACT nor SAT have modified their documentation guidelines. AHEAD has a more user-friendly version of guidelines with explanations that are used by disability service providers. The government.s goal was increasing the number of persons with disabilities who were denied accommodations because of overly-stringent use of guidelines.
I also appreciate the expansion of disabilities, but it will never be exhaustive or sufficiently inclusive of disability. For example, psoriasis is far more than some nuisance, ugly skin condition. People die of psoriasis, my mother did, and heath and additional health problems, mobility, pain, swelling, burning, red and hot extremities and the body. Yet the stigma of the “heartbreak of psoriasis” still negates severity of this condition
If I were to guess why the testing agencies are so tied to the guidelines. I think their goal is equity for students with and without disabilities. I have read more IEPs than most people in special education or anywhere else. What I find is the almost universal inclusion of ET that often does not include a reason for its use. If I were a parent, I would ask what the accommodation is supposed to do for my child and how I would know if it is or is not working.
Beyond the near-universal use of ET, I find that schools and even states differ dramatically in what accommodations are used, how students are identified with an eligibility and which one, what academic program or assistance is provided,…Although schools are now mandated to adopt the IEP from another district when the child enrolls in a new school, there simply is little uniformity in who is identified, the eligibility selected, the accommodations received, the programming implemented, presence of a transition plan, the recency of data, state definitions of disability and educators’ differences in their beliefs about education and special education. My guess is the use of very formal documentation helps to approve accommodations in an orderly fashion in a disordered world.
Many students and their parents think providing ET to a student without disability will allow the student to show what they really know. The research is not supportive of this. The reality is college admissions are competitive. Scores indicate how many questions students can answer correctly within time constraints. The SAT is a competition like sports, how quickly or well one performs a required task at work, and who wins elections. It is reasonable to debate the use or quality of tests or their impact on admissions, but the competitive aspect is key.
Don’t know if you ever watched Dance Moms, a reality program of sorts about a competitive dance team whose members sometimes competed individually. The girls were not performing in recitals, but competitions that added to the school’s and dancers’ reputations and provided financial rewards to it. One mother pleaded for her daughter to solo; eventually, the girl did dance a solo. Her mother was pleased and proud when her daughter came in 5th, She was a member of a dance team that routinely won the overall prize and usually won the top position or two of the solos. The girl who came in 5th was a talented dancer in the group, but wasn’t strong as the soloist. The coach-owner recognized that the girl was more talented than most dancers, but was not competitive as a soloist on a team that expected to win every category they entered. Like the SAT/ACT some are winners and some are excellent and some are average and admissions groups most select the best performers on their desired criteria.
Guess we all do the best we can with what we have. I have had special education materials submitted for documentation of disability that is worthless at confirming functional limitations. In the olden days of special education, it as quite clear that the eligibility was not the same as a diagnosis but the means of qualifying kids for important, needed special education.