@appalachymom I apologize. I misread your post. I saw the reference to ADHD in the first sentence and then made the assumption you were referring to that condition as well. But keep in mind that many kids with ADHD have anxiety as well – which is probably caused by the stress associated with working under time constraints with the condition of ADHD.
There are plenty of workplaces where a task has to be performed in a short amount of time under stress: arguing a case in front of a judge, doing anything with a deadline that has just been handed to you, dealing with any kind of an emergency situation as a EMT, a pilot, a nurse or doctor, even a truck driver.
I don’t know if giving extra time for stress and anxiety is really helping the student. At some point, they have to learn how to cope with real life situations causing stress and anxiety.
Another reason wealthier kids, or kids from wealthier towns, are more likely to have accommodations is that the bar at which the schools identify issues is often much lower. My neighbor’s son was IDed with ADHD at a pretty young age in our suburban town. They had moved from a city where he had attended school. No concerns were raised about the potential for ADHD there. And it was very obvious this particular kid had ADHD from spending just a bit of time with him.
It is a difficult problem for schools and colleges. Kids that truly need accommodations should get them, but where is the line? Wouldn’t most students do better on a test if they were in a distraction-free room and had 1.5 to 2 times the amount of time given? If a kid with ADD is medicated, should they also be given extra time? Having been through the ADD identification process, there is no actual “test:” and it certainly seems possible to fill out the checklist in a way that meets the diagnostic criteria.
That’s a good point, @mom2and about an ADD kid who is medicated. And what about a student with anxiety who is medicated? Are they still considered disabled if they are on treatment? If I take Xanax, I’m no longer anxious.
Definitely. Undiagnosed LDs cause kids to act out. I once read (sorry, I don’t have the source) that if a child does not know how to read by 4th grade, they are at significantly increased risk of ending up in jail 10-15 years later.
I wonder if my daughter would have a “porsche brain” if she had time and a half on her ACT. We will never have a chance to know, because her executive function is fine. Her anxious disorganized buddies get the bonus time and truly have a chance to boost those scores. Her good friends are twins, with absolutely even academic performance and abilities. The one who is socially anxious and is on Ritalin outscored her twin ACT 33 to 30 on first test with time and a half. Other twin is a bit miffed.
In my suburban town, the students with accommodations all take the ACT, not SAT. It is widely known that, among smart kids, the biggest or only barrier to getting 33+ is the time. ACT is not a “hard” test; it is a test of speed. That’s why there’s an entire industry around the “ACT watch/clock,” so kids can constantly monitor their time while taking the test. There’s no such watched designed specifically for the SAT. For those who can get it, the extra ACT time makes all the difference.
@bobo44 The “Porsche brain” comment was made due to DD’s IQ score which was in the top 1% and the differential between her ability and her performance being hampered by ADHD and dyslexia. If your daughter doesn’t have a diagnosed learning disability combined with a high IQ, then she does not have a “Porsche brain” that is being held back. If, on the other hand, your daughter has a high IQ with no disabilities, her Porsche brain would be free to perform at maximum capacity. I think you’ll find that if you take the time to educate yourself about learning disabilities and what’s required to obtain accommodation, it will free you from being concerned about a perceived unfairness.
“Porsche brain” is a very, very poor metaphor. My younger child’s brain is not a Yugo or a Ford Pinto. I do not begrudge accommodations, but I do object the assumption that people and their brains are no more complex than cars. I would be appalled if someone called my HYPS kid’s brain a Porsche brain as what is important about her is far more than a speedy brain.
I have two kids, one who doesn’t have accommodations and is at Pomona which is one reason why this article piqued my interest. The other is in HS and has accommodations for ADHD, anxiety and dyslexia. I’ve seen for myself how high the bar was set to get accommodations: we were initially turned down for a 504 in middle school because grades were too high and reading was near grade level. I’ve also seen for myself what a difference accommodations have made for D2 both in her ability to learn and her ability to demonstrate what she knows on testing and her self confidence and self esteem.
D2 has also been good a figuring out ways to compensate and accommodate her own learning style, searching out YouTube videos and podcasts for reviews in her history class, for example, where there was no audio version of the textbook available. We’ve also talked about what she should major in in college and possible career choices, and how her learning differences would work in those settings. She is definitely strongest in math and science. She’s interested in being pre-med but we’ve also talked about how maybe something like computer science or chemistry would be more suited to her learning style. She loves art and has taken many art classes in HS but is incredibly slow at producing a finished product. She does better under time pressure doing something quantitative.
I wish we had more data on what’s happening at colleges with a spike in the number of students getting accommodations. How many of these students entered as freshman with a request for accommodations, and how many were granted them for the first time after encountering difficulty at college. The colleges in the article are elite highly selective colleges so the students were by definition high performers when they were admitted. A few months back there was an article in the Pomona student newspaper about how there were more students on medical or personal leave than on study abroad, another indicator of the effects of stress and anxiety. I think that the administration sees the campus mental health resources being overwhelmed and options like granting leave and granting testing accommodations are ways to address these issues.
But I think we should still ask ourselves why this surge in students struggling with anxiety in college? Are colleges addressing it in a way that leads to the best long term outcome for the student involved and is also fair to the other students?
Yes yes and more yes to this:
“if we stopped trying to force every kid into an education system that’s designed more for the convenience of the adults administering it”
A thousand times yes to that statement.
If the system were designed around the students more, then we would see fewer anxiety and other issues. Yes, absolutely.
@mamalion I thought the analogy was a good one. We will have to agree to disagree. The doctor who made the analogy has a PhD in learning disabilities and the doctor herself has learning disabilities. The analogy is not meant to be taken literally; everyone knows the brain is infinitely more complex than a car. It was simply a way to show the difference between performance and ability.
I sat in a very lengthy and documentation heavy child study for one of mine. He was granted an accommodation and refused to use it because it was “embarrassing”. He would trade places with ANY kid to relieve him of his ADHD/anxiety issues. Medication doesn’t fix things for anxious/ADHD kids - it just helps them cope and it comes at a physical and mental price. Mine graduated from college without medicine, but he left a lot on the table.
There will always be people that game the system with regard to testing, but it’s insulting to suggest that everyone is doing so. As for the workforce commentary, within the last couple of years, my company had all employees complete mental health questionnaires in an attempt to help employees. Maybe the questionnaire was going to be used for other purposes (I would hope not), but accommodations were made for certain individuals based on their answers.
As for the ACT vs SAT debate - the SAT’s many format changes have pushed it closer and closer to the ACT so I wouldn’t say the ACT is easier.
" There will always be people that game the system with regard to testing, but it’s insulting to suggest that everyone is doing so."
This. Yes. My nephew is dyslexic and the hurdles and obstacles to get him extra help have been ridiculous.
Anecdotally on the SAT vs ACT debate: my HS kid has testing accommodations (extra time and audio accommodations for ADHD and dyslexia). She has taken the SAT twice this school year and scored 1430 and then 1420. Then her school scheduled the ACT for all juniors and she took that with accommodations and we were surprised when she got a 35 composite and 35’s in all sections.
Are you all serious? Your kids will do better if they have time and half? This isn’t about a kid doing better if they have time and a half, this is about a kid being able to be equal doing time and a half. Furthermore, the testing is expensive, time intensive, etc. It requires quite a bit of time from the student and family to get through the testing, appointments, learning sessions, tutoring, etc. This NOTE from the doctor may seem trivial, but let me try this analogy. Your child’s transcript is actually just a few pages of classes, grades, and accomplishments… very simple. In reality, it is years of blood, sweat, and tears (for some) of work, selecting classes, joining organizations, etc. It is much more than the list in front of you.
As for medication eradicating symptoms and allowing you to be equal, that further goes to show how much you don’t understand about these (minor to you) disabilities. Along with ADD or ADHD for example, comes organization issues, forgetfulness, social anxiety for some, and a myriad of other issues. The medication does not fix all these symptoms or completely calm the disability. It slows down the brain and allows a person more control, but they still have to contend with the other issues. I’ve watched a close friend navigate these waters with her very bright daughter and I can’t believe how flippantly you all are describing it.
I have a college student with a learning disability. It took time off work (me), out of school (him), and lots of money to get diagnosed and to get the help he needed. Even with his accommodations, he is at a disadvantage from your student, so I encourage you all to rethink your stance on how unfair it is to your child. You have no idea how much he and I wish we could be in your child’s position.
Wow. This is scary. Did they REQUIRE all employees to take it? Did the employer-based health insurance company require it? Unless you work for a hospital or mental health organization, I fear that this was not an altruistic endeavor.
Regarding the workforce: it depends on the job. I know my limitations and plan accordingly.
I’m working this summer in a non- academic job. When I interviewed, I was open and honest about my disabilities. The accommodations they’ve made for me include letting me work from home most days so I can pace myself.
So yes, there certainly are jobs out there that accommodate more than just physical disabilities.
I’d rather my kids scored lower on the ACT and not have a diagnosed need for accommodations.
My wife is in primary care and has had to deny people trying to get extra time for their kids for anxiety. They need a diagnosed psychiatrist-care level before they qualify for a note to the school.
The issue is that some of these disabilities are on a continuum. There are plenty of kids with some executive function, dysgraphia, or ADD symptoms that compensate well or are so smart they meet the benchmarks and aren’t actually diagnosed. That benchmark will vary by district. Our elementary principal’s attitude was to minimize the number of kids with 504s. Others want to accommodate everyone. The medication is designed to alleviate the symptoms, but that doesn’t mean (as I have told my ADD kid) that they will magically be well organized or have it all together. It just means they have the ability to do that - at a level like other kids. And yes it cost time and money and tutors to get my kid the assistance he needed outside of school. He did well on standardized tests without accommodations, it was the day to day work that was difficult for him and writing in particular.
Many kids need actual accommodations, but let’s not pretend that there aren’t families that game or take advantage of a relatively minor LD to get accommodations that lead the student to do much better than they would otherwise.
There is no easy answer Of course kids that need them should get accommodations. But when 15% to 20% or 25% of students in a class get extra time, how can they all really require that?
That is why College Board and ACT require more than just a psycho educational report with an ADHD diagnosis as justification for extended time. Some families start the process in high school hoping to gain a diagnosis and get accommodations, right around the time of standardized testing. They make appointments with psychologists and get reports on their kids’ ADHD thinking this is the silver bullet to extended time. These kids don’t get the accommodations that easily, because in addition to the diagnosis, they also have to demonstrate to the testing companies a history of use of accommodations in middle and high school. Kids who are diagnosed in elementary school who have used accommodations throughout their lives can get the accommodations more easily. In other words, it doesn’t appear like they are just trying to game the system for the sake of getting an advantage on the college admissions tests. I can see how it looks a bit suspicious when suddenly after 10 years in school, a family decides that their kid might have ADHD.