The New York Times

February 8, 2001

Disabled Win Halt to Notations of Special Arrangements on Tests

By TAMAR LEWIN

   In a major victory for disability rights groups, the Educational
   Testing Service announced yesterday that on many of its standardized
   exams it would stop flagging the results of students with physical or
   learning disabilities who receive special accommodations, like extra
   time, for the tests.

   The new policy, covering the Graduate Record Examination, the Graduate
   Management Admission Test, the Test of English as a Foreign Language
   and Praxis, a test for teachers, will go into effect in October. More
   than two million students take those tests each year, and thousands
   receive accommodations for disabilities.

   The announcement is part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed two
   years ago by a California man with no hands who was granted extra time
   and the use of a computer with a trackball for taking the management
   test.

   It does not cover the tests given for medical or law school. Nor does
   it cover the SAT, which is also administered by Educational Testing
   Service but owned by the College Board, an independent entity not
   named in the lawsuit. Nonetheless, the settlement includes an
   agreement that the College Board will convene a group to re-examine
   its flagging policy and recommend by March 31, 2002, whether it should
   be continued, changed, or ended.

   "This is a huge, major step forward for equal opportunity in testing,"
   said Robert Schaeffer, the public education director of FairTest, a
   Cambridge, Mass., group that is critical of standardized testing. "The
   pressure now is on the College Board to do the same for the SAT, since
   it's untenable to have one policy for the graduate-school admission
   test and a completely different one for the SAT."

   For decades, students granted extra time or other accommodations on
   the standardized tests had their results flagged with the notation
   "Scores Obtained Under Special Conditions."

   When the plaintiff in the California suit, Mark Breimhorst, was
   rejected from the business schools to which he applied, he filed his
   suit charging that the testing service's flagging policy violated
   state and federal anti- discrimination laws, stigmatizing disabled
   students with a kind of scarlet letter.

   The International Dyslexia Association and Californians for Disability
   Rights joined his suit.

   The testing service initially moved to dismiss Mr. Breimhorst's
   lawsuit, but last year, Judge William Orrick of Federal District
   refused to do so, ruling that the service's exams should "equally
   measure the skills of disabled and nondisabled test-takers" and that,
   if they did so, there would be no reason to flag the scores of
   test-takers who received accommodations.

   In settling the case, the testing service did not admit any violation
   of the law.

   "Having carefully weighed the expressed concerns of people with
   disabilities," said Kurt Landgraf, the president of the testing
   service, "we decided, in the spirit of furthering opportunity, to end
   flagging" for the tests.

   David Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admission Council,
   said yesterday that business school admissions officers seemed
   comfortable with the settlement.

   "The people I've talked to say that if that's what the applicants
   want, so be it," Mr. Wilson said. "The unfortunate thing is, most of
   them thought it was beneficial for applicants to have that flag,
   because when admissions officers looked at the applicant's experience,
   and saw that a person had achieved all that despite a disability, it
   usually had a positive effect."

   Although Mr. Breimhorst had a physical disability, the largest,
   fastest-growing and most controversial group of students with
   disabilities accounting for 9 out of every 10 accommodation granted
   are those with attention deficit disorder or a learning disability
   like dyslexia.

   Over the last decade, the number of students diagnosed with such
   disabilities, and requesting special accommodations, has mushroomed.

   At the same time, there has been increasing concern that affluent
   white students receive accommodations on their standardized tests far
   more often than poor black or Hispanic students. Last year, for
   example, the California state auditor found that, among the state's
   1999 high school graduates, students in private schools were four
   times more likely than students in public schools to have received
   accommodations on the SAT.

   Whether for physical or learning disabilities, almost all the
   accommodations include extended time. But there is little solid data
   on how much extra time disabled students need to fairly show their
   skills.

   With ever-more competitive college admissions, and more high- stakes
   testing, the debate over accommodating disabled students has heated
   up. And with increasing awareness of the federal anti-discrimination
   laws, students with disabilities have become more litigious about
   their right to receive accommodations on everything from bar exams and
   medical-school admission tests to the yearly state assessment tests.

   "Our settlement doesn't cover every standardized test," said Joshua
   Konecky, the lawyer at Disability Rights Advocates in Oakland, Calif.,
   who represented Mr. Breimhorst, "but E.T.S. is so important in the
   field that we are hoping other groups, like the one that administers
   the medical school test, will look and see that if E.T.S. can
   administer tests without flags, they can, too."

   The SAT is the test for which the most accommodations are granted:
   nearly 50,000 tests will be administered under special conditions this
   year, compared with about 17,000 in 1990-91. About two million
   students applying for college take the SAT each year.

   As part of the settlement, the College Board has agreed to have a
   panel of experts on testing, university admissions and disabilities
   examine the practice of flagging, and make recommendations on whether
   it should be continued, changed or ended.

   "There are good reasons for flagging," said Gaston Caperton, president
   of the College Board, who is himself dyslexic, "and we are pleased
   that the merits will be weighed by an expert panel."

   Chiara Coletti, the spokeswoman for the board, said there was a
   consensus among the colleges and universities on the board that
   accommodations and flagging warrant re-examination.

   Among other things, the experts will consider the extent to which
   extended time affects the comparability of scores between people with
   disabilities and people without them.

   "One easy way to end the whole problem would be to give everyone more
   time on the test, like four and half hours instead of three, or to
   remove enough questions, so that reading speed is no longer an issue,"
   said Mr. Konecky of the Disability Rights Advocates. "If you don't
   have time restraints, you don't have the problem with accommodations.
   I expect that will be on the table."

   Under the terms of the settlement, Mr. Konecky can take the issue back
   to court before the same judge if the disability groups he represents
   do not accept the panel's recommendations.


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