Blacks and Hispanics constitute about 40 percent of all people with
disabilities.  As the article suggests, it is rich white kids in the
suburbs who get most of the accommodations for the SAT.
however, the challenge of determining who legitimately needs an
accommodation should not create a stigmatizing environment for those with
physical disabilities, for example, and others who clearly need one.

Kelly

The New York times

July 15, 2002

Abuse Is Feared as SAT Test Changes Disability Policy

By TAMAR LEWIN

The College Board has agreed to stop flagging the scores of disabled
students who take the SAT under special conditions, such as extra time,
in a legal settlement that could send tremors through the college
admissions process.

About 2 percent of the two million high school students who take SAT's
each year get some accommodations - almost always including extra time -
because of their documented disabilities. To make sure college admission
boards know this, the College Board marks these tests with a notation
that says, "Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions."

But after September 2003, the College Board will no longer flag the
disabled students' scores, a practice that advocates for the disabled
have long denounced as stigmatizing and discriminatory. Without the
notations, colleges will now have no way of knowing if an applicant took
the test under normal conditions, or used a computer, worked in a
separate quiet room, and had four and a half hours for the three-hour
test.

High school guidance counselors said the elimination of flagging could
set off a wave of new applications for accommodations, including some
from students without real disabilities.

Although the settlement arose from litigation by a man with a physical
disability, most of those who are accommodated have attention deficit
problems or learning disabilities like dyslexia, a reading disorder.

"It's the right thing to do, but it's going to have very negative
ramifications," said Brad MacGowan, a guidance counselor at Newton North
High School, in an affluent suburb of Boston. "In a perfect world, if
students really need extended time to do as well as they can on a test,
they should not have it flagged. But it's that flag, that asterisk, that
helps cut down on abuse. This will open the floodgates to families that
think they can beat the system by buying a diagnosis, and getting their
kid extra time."

Some college admissions officers, too, say they worry about how the
change will play out - and whether it will lead to so many requests for
extended time that ultimately, everyone will be allowed four or five
hours.

"I think it's going to run amok and the kids who are going to get most
hurt are the kids who do have real disabilities," said Bruce Poch, the
dean of admissions at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. "It's very
clear who's been getting extended-time: the highest-income communities
have the highest rates of accommodations. I think what's going to have to
happen now is that everyone will, in effect, get more time."

Chiara Coletti, a spokeswoman for the College Board, said the final
settlement probably would be signed as early as today.

Sid Wolinsky of Disability Rights Advocates, a group in Oakland, Calif.,
that handled the litigation, said the end of flagging would allow
millions of disabled students to use the accommodations they need without
worrying that colleges might discriminate against them.

"The flag has been an identifier, which unfairly labels young men and
women as second-class students," Mr. Wolinsky said.

Robert Schaeffer, the public education director of FairTest, a group in
Cambridge, Mass., that is critical of standardized tests, said flagging
was a thorny issue.

"From the perspective of educational equity, it's absolutely a good thing
to stop the flagging and level the playing field for kids with legitimate
disabilities," Mr. Schaeffer said. "But there's been the problem that the

kids who go to the private schools in N.Y.C. know how to take advantage
of accommodations, and the kids who go to Thomas Jefferson High don't.

"And it's further complicated by the fact that the SAT is introducing a
new writing component, so I'm already getting strings of e-mails from
guidance counselors who expect a big surge of accommodation requests from
kids who have bad handwriting, dysgraphia."

On balance, some college admissions officials said, eliminating the flag
for disabilities should make the process fairer.

"If the idea is that the untimed test results are just as valid as the
timed, the results should be the results, period," said Susan Wertheimer,
associate director of admissions at the University of Vermont.

The litigation on flagging started in 1999, when Mark Breimhorst, a
California man who had been allowed extra time on his Graduate Management
Admission Test because he has no hands, sued the Educational Testing
Service, claiming that the notation on his records was a red flag for
business school admissions officers, amounting to illegal discrimination
under federal disability laws.

Last year, to settle Mr. Breimhorst's claim, the Educational Testing
Service agreed to stop flagging disabled students' scores on many of its
tests, including the G.M.A.T., the Graduate Record Examination and the
Test of English as a Foreign Language.

The settlement did not cover the SAT, which is administered by the
Educational Testing Service but owned by the College Board. At the time,
though, the College Board agreed to convene a group of experts to
re-examine the flagging policy, and make public the group's
recommendations.

The groups that give the law school and medical school admissions tests
still flag scores of students who receive accommodations - and Mr.
Wolinsky's office has received complaints about those exams, too.

The flagging litigation came amid controversy over the rising use of
accommodations on standardized tests, especially among the affluent. Two
years ago, for example, a study by the California state auditor found
that private school students were four times as likely as public school
student to receive accommodations.

Mr. Wolinsky contends such disparities are a matter of underuse by the
poor, not overuse by the rich.

"Every serious study of learning disabilities and hidden disabilities has
come to the conclusion that learning disabilities are actually
underassessed," he said.

While it is simple to give blind students a Braille exam, there is still
great uncertainty over how much extra time on a test fairly compensates
for the labored reading of someone with dyslexia, or just what
accommodations are right for a student with attention deficit disorder.

"If there's a flood of new accommodation requests, the challenge will
rest with the College Board themselves to further define what constitutes
a valid request, and thank goodness that won't be our job," said Ellen
Goulding, associate director of admissions at Colorado College.

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