quote:
ast year, when the College Board announced that as of this fall it would no longer flag the SAT scores of students with disabilities who took the test with extended time, educators expected a flood of requests from savvy parents eager to secure every advantage for their children.
But what has happened is more complicated — and unexpected — because of the College Board's increasing efforts to ensure that only students with well-documented disabilities received extra time....
About 2 percent of the two million students who take the SAT receive accommodations for their disabilities, the majority of them students with learning disabilities who are allowed extra time. The percentage has more than doubled since 1990, amid a troubling inequity: Affluent students are far more likely than poor ones to have documented disabilities and therefore to receive accommodations.
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Affluent districts, like those in Unionville, Pa., or Basking Ridge, N.J. — both of which were on the list of 142 schools — have a far higher rate of accommodations than large urban districts.
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The situation is far murkier in private schools, where, typically, parents who believe their child would do better with extra time go to a private evaluator and come back with a report recommending extended time on tests, a report that is usually accepted.
"We have high-powered, savvy parents, and if they come in with a $3,000 evaluation, dead set on getting extra time, it's very difficult to turn them down," said a learning specialist at one selective New York City private school. "I think the College Board's doing the right thing, and helping us not buckle to parental pressure. But right now we're seeing a lot of freaked-out parents."
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posted 12 November 2003 04:14 PM
