[This piece originally appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006. Click here to go to the original post.]
As high school juniors file into classrooms for their SAT’s on Saturday, there will probably be some chatter about how more than 4,000 of last fall’s tests were scored too low. What they probably won’t be aware of is how many of their fellow students may end up with higher scores because they are allowed more time to take the test. Last year, more than 40,000 of the two million SAT takers were granted special accommodations, mainly because of learning disabilities. This represents a doubling in the past decade and a half.
In a perfect world, accommodations on the SAT would level the playing field for all test-takers with learning disabilities. Is that the case? The College Board, the overseer of the SAT, declines to give figures on the family incomes of students who get extra time.
It would be a good guess, however, that such accommodations are not being awarded fairly across race and socioeconomic lines — it generally takes a lot of time, energy and, in some cases, money to get on the accommodations list in the first place. A student must have his learning disability documented by a psychologist, and then use the accommodations recommended by the psychologist on tests at his own high school.
The trend in requesting extensions troubles many schools and teachers. While they made no mention of requests for accommodations, more than 200 high-school administrators in January submitted a petition to the College Board that criticized the length of the test and asked the board to give students the option of taking each of the test’s three sections (writing, math and critical reading) on different days.
But this recommendation would succeed only in making an already unfair situation worse by increasing the overall cost of the test for students. The SAT is not too long — it’s too short. The fairest solution would be to make it untimed for everyone.
Extra-time accommodations fall into two categories: time and a half (so the regular 3 hour 45 minute test swells to just over five and a half hours) and double time. But when scores are reported to colleges, there is no indication whether students had the usual amount of time, or more.
This lack of transparency is untenable. If we continue to look to the SAT as a major gatekeeper to the nation’s colleges and universities, we need to understand what got us to this point and also have an honest discussion about the potential solutions.
Back in 1999, a California man named Mark Breimhorst sued over the longstanding practice of flagging SAT scores as “obtained under special conditions” when test takers were given extra time. Mr. Breimhorst, who needed accommodations on tests because he has no hands, argued that this practice violated the rights of students with disabilities by potentially identifying them as disabled to admissions officers (the human gatekeepers) and thus forcing disabled test takers to forgo accommodations.
It was an effective argument, and the College Board, after some foot-dragging, agreed to drop the notation in 2002. What has been happening ever since is a little hard to quantify, but it is happening in just about every high school. More students are documenting their learning disabilities and using accommodations in their classes, the prerequisite set by the College Board for using accommodations on the SAT. For the record, I am not against accommodations for students at their own schools. In my 15 years of teaching, when students have asked me for an extension on an assignment for any reasonable reason, I have given them one.
But what my colleagues and I are noticing is that accommodations for the SAT in other areas — using tests with large type, for example — are not increasing nearly as quickly as extended time (the College Board said it couldn’t say if this was the case). It is clear to all of us on the inside that what is driving this phenomenon is the pressure cooker known as the SAT.
The solution is simple: keep the test to one day but end the time limits. The College Board can surely reduce the number of overall questions on the test (there are now a whopping 170, mostly multiple choice, plus one essay) and design them so that they go from embarrassingly easy to impossible except for the top percentile of students to answer even without a deadline.
That goal should be to give everyone a chance to tackle every question and eliminate time as a factor — thereby accommodating the learning style of all children, including those with disabilities. The College Board needs to take its test back to the drawing board. The answers to these design challenges and issues of fairness may not be as easy as multiple choice, but they can be found.
Mark Franek is the dean of students at the William Penn Charter School.
Dear Mr. Franek:
I read your thoughtful op-ed piece and have a few comments.
I worked as Principal Research Scientist at the Educational Testing Service from 1980 until 2001. During this time I looked into the issue of
accommodations. It is indeed a thorny one.
Two issues that must be considered are:
(i) fairness for all — does the accommodation give the student who receives it the right amount of help — too much tilts the field in the
other direction; too little doesn’t remove the tilt.
(ii) unintended consequences – the option you suggested (untimed tests) has the obvious consequence (increased costs of testing that must be borne by the examinee population), and an unexpected one (the difference in the score
distributions between ethnic groups gets exacerbated).
I have listed two nontechnical piece below that explain this.
HW
Howard Wainer
Distinguished Research Scientist
National Board of Medical Examiners
3750 Market Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
(215)590-9861 (voice)
(215)590-9603 (Fax)
hwainer@nbme.org (email)
How much does extra time on the SAT help? (with B. Bridgeman, M. Najarian and C. Trapani). Chance, 17(2), 19-24, 2004.
Testing the disabled: Using statistics to navigate between the Scylla of standards and the Charybdis of court decisions. Chance, 13(2), 42-44, 2000.
Mark: I read your article in today's NY Times. Personally I think its wrong to give anyone more time on the SATs, because in real world, how fast you work / figure something out matters. Given infinite time almost all would do better on tests. *I'm writing you about something else however, I found out from my research 2 years ago, about how the SATs have now been rigged vs. Males, and we all know in today's modern society it is males that are the subperformers, especially black-males. By the same changes the SATs have also now become more rigged vs. Foreign born students (often minorities), more rigged than before.
Let me first tell you my daughter did great on the SATs, she got a 1570 out of 1600 in 2004, and is a Natl. Merit Finalist on academic scholarship in her freshman year with Tulane Univ. in New Orleans (yes she suffered last Fall the Hurricane). What I'm referring to is the change in the SATs in past year adding a 3rd section, another verbal type section, the Writing Section. The Educ. Testing Corp. out of Princeton? made the change of adding another Verbal Section in response to a pressure-group lawsuit which alleged it discriminated against Girls, because girls were getting less than half the Natl. Merit Scholarships, because they did worse on the Math Section of SATs. Their "thesis" was that Girls were smarter or did better in school (they pointed out girls had higher GPAs) hence girls should have at least half the Natl. Mer. Scholarships.
To rectify the situation, and to end the Lawsuit, the SAT Co. agreed to add the Writing Section, which raised girls' scores vs. boys. As you can see per above, my daughter did great on the SATs, got a 770 on the Math, and an 800 on the Verbal, I have no personal ax to grind. But I do believe in social justice, and I do know boys deserve a fair shot in life too, but were already slipping and now will slip more. My daughter had same chances to learn Math as any other kid and she learned well. Girls do better in grades in H.S. that's true, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have higher IQs. The SATs are measuring APTITUDE, not how well you do your homework, how neat your writing is, or how often you attend class,… all stuff girls tend to do better than boys and so may account for their slightly higher grades. Hence higher grades for girls don't necessarily mean they should have higher SAT scores, and so the SATs should have been changed. Verbal Sections especially discriminate against non-native speakers. There are many ways to test intelligence other than X word is to Y word as G word is to H word. That favors people born into English speaking homes. Reading and Writing in English also greatly favors American born, and discriminates against Hispanic, Asians…etc. Adding a 2nd Verbal type section was just plain wrong… they could have added a History or Science section. Girls are already doing better scholastically, are already attending college in greater numbers nowadays than Boys. Further help to Girls was not what the SATs should have done. I PASS THE TORCH ON TO YOU TO FIGHT FOR = RIGHTS FOR BOYS, and to not have the Results for Girls More Tilted in Their Favor.
Andrew Walzer
[follow-up email . . .] By the way, Educ. Test. Serv. Corp. may not admit that the Lawsuit some Pro-Girls pressure group did against them was reason for their change to adding a 2nd verbal section to first the PSATs (the Natl. Mer. Schol. exam) and then the SATs. But I know it is, because I researched stuff about SATs…etc. a lot 2 years ago, and even had e-mail arguments with the group doing the LAWSUIT against ETS (SAT co.). For example fact that girls have higher H.School grades but used to have fewer very high scorers for Natl. Mer. Scholarships, doesn't prove that ETS was wrong and had to change and add another verbal section… rather it might just mean that Teachers in High Schools factor in other stuff besides answers on Multiple Choice Tests when giving out grades, and maybe girls do better on that other stuff.
Andrew Walzer
Dear Mr. Franek,
(OPC ‘99. I’ll give you until the end of the email to try to think of the title of my chapbook.)
I just got back from work and was reading the New York Times online and was pleasantly surprised to see “Franek: An Untimed SAT” under the Op-Eds. I’ve come across some of the columns you’ve written on the SAT in the past couple years. Last year I was doing a lot of SAT verbal/writing tutoring and found myself conflicted and curious about the various iniquities and failures in the whole testing & test-coaching system, so I’ve enjoyed reading your columns. How’s everything at PC?
Life updates: I graduated from Penn in ‘04 on a 5-year plan: I got a BA in International Relations and a BS in Economics from Wharton, and I spent my third year on scholarship studying Chinese in Beijing. I stayed in
Philadelphia for a year after graduating, working for Bill Luterman (OPC 87) and tutoring Korean-American high school students in SAT, and then last summer moved to Los Angeles to get into the film business. I recently got a
job working at Creative Artists Agency as assistant to a senior agent (another one of CAA’s agents, Brandt Joel, is OPC, though I don’t work for him). It’s a dues-paying job, but the experience, exposure, and access in
the industry are unparalleled. I’m not sure yet exactly what I want to do in the business (producer, writer, literary agent?) but I’m learning a ton, so things are good.
I’m also tutoring on the weekends. I’m teaching the 8 year-old son of one of the agents Chinese, and I’m hoping to find some high school students for SAT, both for the supplemental income and because I really enjoy teaching. I prefer to think of myself more as a teacher than SAT coach–my students’ biggest gains are generally in the real writing skills rather than SAT tricks. But the whole SAT system is definitely in need of major reform.
Hope all is well!
Cheers,
Ryan
PS. “Midnight Oil.” Man would I be impressed if you were able to come up with that.
Dear Dean Franek,
Just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your “Time To Think” article in The New York Times. Along these lines, please indulge me in a couple of comments based on my own observations and biases.
As one who has managed to work his way through the educational system in pursuit of a “terminal degree” (and several others along the way), I have often questioned the value of timed-tests. While I understand there are logistical matters to consider in administering tests in a classroom setting, I also know that “real life” seldom requires humans to solve problems under artificial time constraints. Granted, there are circumstances when this is not the case (e.g., hospital emergency rooms), but even then the skills necessary to “think on one’s feet” have been honed through many years of study and practical experience. Indeed, History is rife with calamities that have been caused by individuals who failed to give careful consideration to their actions before taking action. Seems to me that timed-tests not only “measure” the wrong quality, they also perpetuate the notion that rapid problem solving is somehow superior to exercising care and patience when solving complex problems.
Thanks for permitting me to vent my spleen on this important issue! And, thank you for taking on the College Board and the sacrosanct SAT.
Lon Roberts, Ph.D.
Hello Mr Franek,
I read your op-ed piece “Time to Think” with great interest. As a vice principal/director of guidance, part of my job deals with testing
accommodations on the SAT as well as other standardized tests.
Our student population’s economic profile exhibits both extremes, but our mode is toward the below average end. I frequently hear from nearby directors in districts whose profile leans further to the wealthier end that they have noticed an increased parental interest intrusion?) into their child’s testing conditions (as well as daily classroom conditions). But I will speak for our circumstances only.
We have had a small increase in the number of students with SAT testing accommodations: from nil to a few. As our parents start spreading the news I suspect that the numbers of students “in need” will also increase. In the past, it seemed that when we filed an SSD form with the College Board there was no guarantee that the accommodation would be approved and appeals were lengthy and frustrating. I will reiterate that we
don’t have many students with approved SAT testing accommodations so our sample is small, but I have noticed that lately the College Board has quickly and without appeal approved the few requests we have submitted. ETS seems to be more selectively picking their battles.
Your suggestion of untimed tests for all is an interesting one. It is interesting because our experience with those students with permitted
extended time has been that they not only don’t take advantage of the extra time, they take the test in less time than the regularly timed students are. I wonder what the differences are between the scores of regularly time and extended timed scores are? While ETS is no longer permitted to report such statistics, I am certain they still confidentially maintain them.
Would untimed testing simply give the already advantaged student an even greater advantage over the student defined as disadvantaged? And do you truly mean untimed? If you are an SAT supervisor (as I am) you already know that those first Saturdays of the month are long days already. How long will we be staying now? How many proctors will be willing to stay as long as it takes? And ETS will certainly want to know how much more will they have to pay proctors to stay an unlimited time? There is no way to know beforehand which students will actually take more time so I can foresee an afternoon on
testing day: there are classrooms with only 3 or 4 students still taking the test-each proctor having finished reading the NY Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and perhaps even the directions to the SAT several times. Or does
your untimed proposed have a point of no return no matter how we advertise?
While the whole testing mentality is ugly, unleashing time restrictions would only make it uglier.
Sincerely,
James M Shelley
Vice Principal/Director of Guidance
Cliffside Park High School
Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
201-313-2376; 201-945-4717 (fax)
e-mail: jshelley@cliffsidepark.edu
i read your SAT article and completely agree! having 2 children in college and a high school junior, i have been exposed to this of late.
one way to make it fair to show who can think well and who can think fast would be to give the score coupled with the amount of time it took.
student A 1530 2 hours 10 mins.
student B 1530 1 hour 40 mins.
the only schools that would much care about speed would be medical and law schools where they cram way too much material in the allotted time, but that would factor into their GRE exam not their SAT’s, so time might matter to them. (i knew a doctor who said to me, just about anyone can be a doctor if given enough time to spread out the course of study, the trick is juggling all the plates at one time in such a compacted time frame.) but otherwise, other schools would be more interested in who could actually THINK and reason no matter with less interest in the time it took.
mary dunlap
norfolk, va
Dear Mr. Franek: Great article. I hope your ideas are adopted immediately! I retired from teaching in 2000. Much distressed by the
abuse of learning disabilities in general(enormous waste of money in many cases) and the extended time problem on SAT and other exams.
I came to the same conclusion you’ve come to. (In my classes I gave all the kids extended time.) But where do you get people to proctor the exams if they last all day? At my school (in affluent northern Westchester County, NY) it was tough getting anyone to proctor given the very low pay and the bad (weekend) hours.
Tom Corwin
Dear Mr. Franek:
I read with interest your Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about ‘seat time’ for the SAT. I thought you might be interested in my daughter’s experience with her 9th grade English mid-term this year at the local public high school in suburban Philadelphia. The rigors of the SAT pale in comparison: 3 short essay questions (e.g., one paragraph each), 1 long essay question (say, the side of a loose leaf sheet), and 200 multiple-choice vocabulary items. Time allotted? ne-and-three-quarters hours.
Now it is an honors class, as the teacher points out most regularly. So in-depth does it go that they’ve spent 3 months dissecting A Tale of Two Cities, and they’re still not through the novel yet. My daughter, who blossomed in English classes for many years, now hates English. Needless to say.
Professionally I’ve moved over the years from working in theatre to teaching to writing standardized tests, and I sometimes think my career path (largely unplanned, except the theatre part) parallels our changing cultural values. It used to be that self-discovery, individual expression, and art received a lot of attention out there in society at large. Then came the ascendancy of pragmatism: learn what you need to know to make a living. OK. But now I’m convinced that we’ve just abandoned real education in favor of achievement. It doesn’t matter what you learn, so long as the best college possible will accept you—and then your high school gets bragging rights. So you better get a top score on the SAT!! What no one seems to be telling kids, though, is that very few people care where you went to college once you’re out of there. Maybe a handful of institutions catch the eye of some employers, but most of them don’t know the academic scene well enough for it to make that huge of a difference.
One of the recurring images in A Tale of Two Cities is of a team of horses with a carriage careening forward, recklessly onward. I think our children are the horses and we are the adults who are riding them hard.
Who are these great SAT scores really for?
Thank you for reading my letter.
Yours sincerely,
Ruth Larkin
Mark,
Thank you for your Op-Ed piece in the New York Times today.
One of the greatest disconnects between succeeding at the SAT’s as a student and succeeding as an adult in a work environment is that, as adults, our work is normally not timed and our final product is often the result of a group effort. We can’t make taking the SAT’s a group effort, but we can certainly remove the pressure that comes from the constantly ticking clock. By placing tight time limits on the SAT’s their creators limit the value of the test. The scores reflect who can think quickly not necessarily who can think well. The issue of providing untimed tests for some has already been addressed, so the logistics of offering that option to everyone cannot be insurmountable.
I believe the reason that some colleges are dropping the SAT as a requirement is linked to the timed nature of the test.
How can we help make this change actually happen?
Thanks again,
Tom Taft
Director of Finance
Dear Mr. Franek,
As a former college admissions counselor and high school teacher (in a public school), I read your article with great interest.
In my career as a teacher, I encountered a number of students with diagnosed learning disabilities and IEPs. Most of them came from higher income brackets. Sometimes these disabilities were truly present, other times they existed only on paper. I also noticed what I thought to be learning disabilities in several students from lower-income brackets who were unable to go through the expensive, rigorous testing.
Interestingly enough, when I worked as a college counselor, it seemed that many disabilities vanished once the student entered the university, even though the college where I worked had an office for students with learning disabilities and offered accomodations. It was sorely underutilized.
I think your idea to have a day-long, untimed SAT is exceptional. Hopefully enough people will agree and get the ball rolling. The test will be fairer for everyone, and maybe we won’t have so many parents pushing for documentation that’s not really necessary.
Sincerely,
Brandon Ferguson
Madrid, Spain
Mark,
Im not sure who should be more impressed–me that you had an editorial published, or you that I actually read the New York Times
editorials page. I even read yours before Thomas Friedman’s. All kidding aside, I really like what you wrote, particularly the part
about the socioeconomic breakdown of kids with untimed testing. Ironic, I suppose, that a test designed to level the playing field could render it so uneven.
I actually took a class this past semester on Economics and Public policy. One of its main focuses was to address various shortcomings
and iniquities in public education and try to fix them using an economist’s approach–which is to say that we consider the intended and unintended consequences of policy, something many politicians, sadly, do not. Among the many things I learned is that successful education policies, whether concerning teacher salaries or No Child Left Behind, are not easily crafted. Often ideas that seem good, even virtuous, falter in practice, which might explain the current state of education in America.
With that in mind, I am pretty impressed with your solution. Not only is it original, but it goes a long way to alleviate many of the
moral hazards that plague the SATs. Likewise, I think it goes beyond issues of fairness and actually creates a better test. In my experience, the best tests were always ones for which only intelligence or skill could provide an advantage–not outside help or any other situational advantages. Like you said, some questions are hard enough that you can spend all day on them and still on a few people will get them. That’s why the American Invitational Math Exam was so great–you could give up, knowing that even if you had tried, the result would not have been any different.
Seriously, great editorial, although I almost didn’t believe it was you without any Star Wars references.
Your old friend,
Andy
Mr. Franek:
While I think your solution to the inherent inequalities between timed and untimed administrations of the SATs (and the logical increase of the differences’ impact with the addition of a third test) is well-reasoned as well as reasonable, I must point out that your solution, too, still allows for some continuation of inequalities. My rationale: one big difference between upper SES students and lower SES students is employment and its importance to the well being of the student (and, in many cases, her/his family). An upper SES student can afford to sit in the test room for six, eight, even ten hours if he/she
feels the time is productive, but a lower SES student is much more likely to face the pressure of obligations that weigh too heavily for
that student to ignore. I run a large course for the general population of Indiana University (and I work in a federal Department of Education
TRIO program, Student Support Services). One of the things I see happening differently between my Program’s students and that of the
general population of the University is that our students quit sooner (and often without finishing the tests). My best guess: they are not test savvy and do not realize that extra time can translate into higher scores.
Basically the rich can afford the time to do better, but the poor (oftentimes) cannot. I think, though, that your idea ought to be given
a test. It would certainly lend perspective to the questions of time used and effectiveness the use of time by various groups of students.
(Another way to achieve a similar, but more likely pernicious, effect would be to give the test untimed to all, but to report the actual time used to complete each one. This solution would almost surely open a new “arms war” of speed and accuracy among the highly competitive high achieving students!)
Thanks for raising an important topic,
Gordon
R. Gordon Hershey
Groups Student Support Services Program
210A Maxwell Hall — Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana 47405
Mr. Franek;
I enjoyed your op-ed piece, Time to Think, in the March 29th issue of the NY Times. Among the points that you raise, two struck me as most
salient and probably deserve more notice in terms of equity and in maintaining the validity and integrity of the construct of a learning
disability. First, there has always been a general SES factor associated with students who get into special education via the LD label where white, middle and upper class families promote this category for services rather than having their child labeled as mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed. Black and other minorities are more likely to enter special education carrying these labels.
I believe that in recent years there has been a report about the modal distribution of numbers of HS students requesting accommodations on the SAT, where most requests come from the east and west coast, higher SES rather than lower SES
families, and from private rather than public schools. I can’t recall the reference but I think it may have been in the NY Times. The data, then, that would most likely support your notions about access would be to determine when in their academic history a student began receiving special education services. Early childhood? Elementary? Or did they manage to get referred and placed in their junior year just in time to take the PSAT and gain eligibility for an extended time accommodation. It would be odd if their learning needs suddenly appeared at this time.
I would also be interested in if they were diagnosed by a public school assessment team or by a private company. From experience private testing companies always seem to find a learning disability in students they assess. If this is the case then the condition of a learning disability would be very suspect, in my opinion, and had been generated solely for the purpose of gaining extra time on the test. I should mention that research on the extra time accommodation is equivocal about its effect on test scores and on the validity of the interpretations of the score.
Unfair use of the accommodation does not help. Second, an untimed test for everyone makes sense to me and falls under the emerging work in
universal test design. That is, remove certain test standardization barriers for everyone when designing the test so that accommodations for
the disabled are no longer necessary. Structurally, however, this forces test developers to move in part from a norm referenced to a criterion referenced approach and for ETS would be a major overhaul. It makes
sense but more work needs to be done in the area to maintain the validity of the content to be assessed and the reliability of the test scores.
Regards.
Stan Scarpati
School of Education
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Dear Mr. Franek:
Your comments about SAT accommodations found their way to a special ed parent e-mail ring that I participate in. I am a school attorney and have practiced special ed law for twenty-six years, and have two daughters. One is moderately learning disabled and will never take the SAT because she doesn’t test well, and their accommodations would not be sufficient to address her disabilities. She is successfully enrolled in community college.
My other daughter was in the gifted and talented
program in our public school. After the onset of puberty, she began to notice an attention problem. On our state basic skills test, which is untimed for everyone, she was taking the additional time but scoring in the commended (honor) level. We finally found new objective computer diagnostics working with a specialist in this area (because of my work in this area–both on behalf of schools and parents, I was not
interested in finding someone who would tell me she was ADD, but rather finding someone very well-versed in the area who could provide us with information to either establish or rule out the possibility). She continues to use this accommodation in her major college in large classes (she’s tried not using it,
and it creates major problems for her).
In looking up your e-mail address, I did a little
looking around on your charter school web site. While I notice references to diversity in terms of ethnicity, I find nothing in the admissions or
curriculum sections concerning students with special needs. It therefore occurs to me that you may not have much experience in working with such students and that may be why you think that the “fair” thing to do would be to give all students unlimited time on the SAT.
My younger daughter made a 1300 on the SAT without accommodations before she was diagnosed. What would she have made with additional time? I don’t know. I do know that I was unable to get additional time on
the AP tests without having testing for a learning disability done on her–which would have been ridiculous as she’s never shown any sign of a learning disability. I believe that policy violates 504, but I did not challenge it at the time.
I am flabbergasted by your suggestion to just give all students unlimited time or have a three step time procedure. Students are only eligible for accommodations they are already receiving in school, having demonstrated both a disability and an educational need under Section 504 or IDEA. Your school doesn’t appear to accept students who have such needs. The allowance of extra time for those students with disabilities that create the need for additional time (in my own daughter’s case her problem is being distracted by other test takers–on short or
simple tests it’s not a problem, but on more involved and longer tests it’s a very real problem) satisfies the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination against the handicapped because it provides a reasonable accommodation of their handicap and enables them to compete on an even playing field as students without their disabilities. To give such
an allowance to all students, unless time is not part of the evaluation, doesn’t create an even playing field, it creates a disability based discrimination.
I’d suggest you learn a little bit more about these students that you don’t teach to better understand the challenges and obstacles they face. Perhaps then you can even impart to your own students a tolerance and understanding not only of ethnic diversity, but of students with disabilities.
Susan Feller Heiligenthal
Dear Mr. Franek,
Congratulations on a truly excellent Op Ed piece in the New York Times. As the parent of a high school junior, I felt that you hit every point right on the mark.
Untimed SAT’s are the only reasonable solution. And I say this as the parent of a child who is very entitled to extended time, who needs it and WHO REFUSES IT, much to the chagrin of his teachers, counselor and school administrators (not to mention his parents). He wants a high SAT score as badly as the next kid – perhaps more badly – but it’s more important to him to be part of the mainstream, and he’s willling to sacrifice precious SAT points for that privilege. So one discussion point you might add to your argument is that federal law mandates inclusion for students with disabilities whenever possible. Segregating them at SAT test-taking time and treating them differently is not a better solution than untimed SAT’s for everyone. And where is the evidence that society will suffer if every kid gets an untimed SAT? I have yet to see it. Rapid answers are for quiz shows. Reasoning tests require time for reasoning. As you pointed out, extremely difficult questions will separate the highest achievers. The present SAT is simply an endurance test – longer than the GRE, the LSAT and the GMAT. Only the MCAT is longer!
Perhaps we need to do more than petition the College Board. It may be necessary for parents and educators to contact legislators and demand reforms, including minimum standards for the administration of all standardized tests.
There is one other SAT issue which you did not address and which I hope you’ll consider, since you are obviously a strong and vocal advocate for our kids. Students should not be penalized because schools have switched emphasis from penmanship to keyboard competency. All students should be allowed the option of using a keyboard for any written portion of any standardized test. The notion of suddenly expecting a generation of students raised on computers to have beautiful handwriting on the new written portion of the SAT is absurd.
Thanks so much for taking the position you have and for advocating for our students.
Best regards,
A parent who prefers to remain anonymous
Mr. Franek,
It was disheartening to read this article. First, research has shown that the use of “extended time” for students without a learning disability has no significant impact on their score where as a student with a learning disability it does.
Secondly, a student with a learning disability would probably benefit from a test given with enlarged type but the reason this is not used is because it’s not an accommodation readily available in the public school system. So, it’s difficult to prove why it’s necessary with the College Board.
Wouldn’t it be nice if teachers were better trained to address the needs of all children rather than try to disenfranchise those students who would benefit the most from accommodations.
Carlene Ryan
Bravo – Mark Franek has it absolutely right!
To truly level the playing field, to determine the depth of knowledge a student possesses, time need not be a factor, even though there has been the apocryphal assumption that the quicker one can summon knowledge, the brighter one is. Faster is not necessarily better, as the tortoise showed the hare.
As a psychologist and educational consultant, I have often had to provide documentation to allow students to receive these considerations. I have long wondered about this process, the need for youngsters to continually undergo testing to document a disability over and over again. There is something demeaning in the process.
If Franek’s suggestion were adopted, it would help everyone and insure that the SATs were better assessing each student’s mastery.
I would also like to protest the College Board’s reliance on previous accommodations within the student’s high school to grant extended time and other supports. That too, is unfair, as the rules about such help vary from school to school. Often invisible are such considerations as the amount of outside support parents pay for on their own due to the school’s unwillingness to recognize the child’s needs or, conversely, the child who is reluctant to be labeled or to accept help, and works diligently on his/her own, to succeed independently. In the latter cases often their school records reflect such teacher comments as: does not test well, tests do not show true ability, etc. The economic disparity is also at play here, as while private schools can be often more demanding, smaller class size and greater individualization can mitigate the need for accommodations and provide support where needed, thus not providing the college board with a true picture of a student’s disability.
If the SAT is to remain a fair gatekeeper, its rules should consider all of these inequities and Franken has certainly started the ball rolling in the right direction.
Suzanne
Dear Mr. Franek,
I am writing in regard to your recent op-ed in the NYT regarding extended time for all students on the SAT.
I received extra time on both my SAT and on my LSAT. My scores on both exams were quite high–above the 95th percentile. I think your suggestion that the College Board grant additional time for ALL students to complete the SAT has merit. Students who do not receive additional time tend to look askance upon those that do. Indeed, I was ashamed to have received additional time on my LSAT and told none of my classmates about my accommodations. Further, in law school, the in-class exams are severely time-pressured. I received additional time on my law-school exams, which only compounded my shame and served to further ostracise me from my peers.
However, there are some other factors that your analysis may not have taken into account. You should know that studies conducted by Law Services, the equivalent of the College Board for the LSAT, have shown that students who receive accommodations on the LSAT perform
significantly less well in law school than other students. More importantly, as I myself have discovered, in law practice there is not enough time to do the kind of deliberate, careful thinking that is needed to produce work that is equivalent to that of non-disabled lawyers. The same is true, I’m sure, for disabled students who attend undergraduate colleges with heavy workloads. I am all for
making accommodations for those with physical or mental disabilities, but I think we have to consider whether accommodations are in such
persons’ best interests if they will end up in an environment in which they cannot keep up and/or in which further accommodations are
impossible.
Also, we should distinguish between extending special accommodations to disabled students, on the one hand, and affirmative action for underrepresented minorities, on the other hand. The former class of individuals have physical differences that are relevant to their capacity for sucess in certain professions.
Thanks,
Tom Gorham
Carlene Ryan’s comment that “research has shown that extra time has no effect on the scores on non-disabled students” is not true. What is true is more nuanced.
On the SAT-Verbal extra time (at least 50% extra time) yields no change in score. One might interprtet this as “if you don’t know the vocabulary more time can’t help”.
On the SAT-Math extra time does help, but the amount it helps depends on your score. For those who score 300 or below 50% more time didn’t help. But for those who score 700 50% extra time would be worth 40 points (740). Intermediate base-line scores gain intermediate amounts of points. The interpretation of this might be for ablle students who didn’t get it at first moore time alloows them a better shot at working it out. For less able students the extra time just allows them to be lost longer.
So one consequence of adopting an untimed SAT would be to exacerbate race differences. Is this a direction we want to travel?
Mr Franek,
I’m in total agreement with your observations on SAT formulation and administration. When will we learn that in an unequal society, we can’t use one yardstick to measure all equally? Some of us learn and perform tasks quite differently and SAT test taking accomodations must reflect that.
Kathy L Jackson
To Andrew Walzer:
I think that really you should not be complaining about boys having equal rights in general. Rich white boys from the northeast have all the advantages they need, and they definitely oppress your daughter just as they have oppressed all other groups for hundreds of years. It is the achievement gap between whites and blacks that we must work to rectify. I propose a 200 point bonus for all african americans on the SATs to correct for historical and socio-economic inequalities in our great nation. Thank you for your time.
[...] New SAT Scores Low, oped, Christian Science Monitor [...]