The SAT: Where It's At

In the following interview, the College Board's Ms. Paula Kuebler answers questions on the College Board's policies and practices regarding accommodations for students with disabilities who wish to take the SAT I and II, PSAT/NMSQT, and Advanced Placement (AP) tests.

The College Board has provided accommodations for students with disabilities for many years. What would you say have been the two or three greatest successes the Board has had in meeting the needs of students with learning disabilities? What have been the greatest challenges?

Paula Kuebler

Actually, the College Board was providing accommodations on its tests for students with disabilities even before the laws were enacted at the federal and state level to protect the rights of students with disabilities and to provide special educational opportunities for them. The numbers are so much greater now, and the needs increasingly varied, yet the Board, each year, continues to provide appropriate accommodations on all of its tests to students with disabilities.

There have been numerous accomplishments along the way to keep up with the increasing numbers of students diagnosed with disabilities who seek accommodations on our tests. For example, the Board coordinates requests for accommodations across the three major assessments — SAT I and II, PSAT/NMSQT, and Advanced Placement (AP) — thus removing a large amount of labor and paperwork from the students/parents and schools. Also, the Board works directly with schools and districts to help facilitate their students' eligibility for accommodations on our tests; when schools' processes and documentation align with the Board's guidelines, and the schools verify this, the Board accepts this rather than requiring a completely separate process.

The challenges are many. Most daunting is the scope of our task — ensuring that we can fairly address each student's individual needs. Also, equity of access to accommodations on our tests is a challenge trying to ensure that all students with disabilities who need accommodations will have access to our tests. And, finally, reserving our testing accommodations for students with disabilities, not others who simply might benefit from them.

The College Board did away with "flagging" the scores of students who were allowed accommodations (such as extended time, readers, etc.) on their SATs and other assessment tests. Has any research been done on whether this change has had any impact on the success or failure of students with disabilities in college or any impact on the admissions process overall?

Paula Kuebler

The College Board plans to monitor the impact to determine if there are changes in numbers among groups of students who took College Board tests before and after removal of the nonstandard designation. Due to privacy concerns, among other factors, the College Board, however, is not in a position to monitor and evaluate college performance of individual students.

Given that so many individuals with learning disabilities struggle with spelling and grammar - even with the physical act of writing itself - can you tell us how these types of disabilities are taken into account?

Paula Kuebler

Writing on our tests is not new, as the College Board has been providing accommodations for some time to students with disabilities on the SAT II: Writing Subject Test and AP exams. The Board's procedures for determining appropriate accommodations on our tests provide for considerable flexibility customization, if you will to accommodate each student's special needs. The Board continues to review each student's documented need, either as verified by his/her school and parent or as reviewed by the Board, and provide for the appropriate accommodations. In the four major categories for testing accommodations, the following are examples of accommodations the College Board provides to ensure that eligible students get the accommodations they need, such as:

Presentations

• Large print (14 pt; 20 pt) • Fewer items on each page
• Reader
• Colored paper
• Use of a highlighter
• Sign/orally present instructions
• Visual magnification (magnifier or magnifying machine)
• Auditory amplification
• Audio cassette
• Colored overlays
• Braille
• Braille graphs
• Braille device for written responses
• Plastic covered pages of the test booklet
  
  

Responding

• Verbal; dictated to scribe
• Tape recorder
• Computer without spell check/grammar/cut & paste features
• Computer with spell check feature
• Record answers in test booklet
• Large block answer sheet

Timing/Scheduling

• Frequent breaks
• Extended time
• Multiple day (may/may not include extra time)
• Specified time of day

Setting

• Small group setting
• Private room
• Screens to block out distractions
• Special lighting
• Special acoustics
• Adaptive/special furniture/tools
• Alternative test site (with proctor present)
• Preferential seating
  
  

The claim is often made that some parents will try to win their child an extra time accommodation on the SATs, even though their assertion that the child has LD may be spurious. There seems to be evidence, however, that students without disabilities who are granted extended time do no better than those who are kept to the prescribed timeframe for testing, and that only students with documented disabilities benefit significantly from an extra-time accommodation. Are there studies in this area and have they found the above to be true?

Paula Kuebler

There are several research sources that address the question of benefit from extended time. As one recent example, the College Board conducted a study that simulated extra time by reducing the number of questions in a test section. This research, conducted on students without disabilities, measured the impact of allowing more time for each question on SAT I: Reasoning Test scores by embedding sections with a reduced number of questions into the standard 30-minute equating section of two national test administrations. Allowing more time per question had a minimal impact on verbal scores, producing gains of less than 10 points on the 200-800 SAT scale. Gains for the math score were less than 30 points. High-scoring students tended to benefit more than lower-scoring students, with extra time creating no increase in scores for students with SAT scores of 400 or lower. (Effect of Fewer Questions per Section on SAT I Scores. College Board Research Report No. 2003-2).

Also, a finding across a great many studies pertaining to test accommodations was that the accommodation of extended time improves the performance of students with disabilities more than it improves the performance of students without disabilities (The Effects of Test Accommodation on Test Performance: A Review of the Literature. Center for Educational Assessment Research Report no. 485. University of Massachusetts/Amherst.)

Writing presents unique challenges that continue to be studied and the effects of which we will continue to closely monitor.

How difficult is it to have an accommodation approved and what types are most commonly requested? What are the most common reasons for rejecting an application for an accommodation? Do the majority of students who request and receive an accommodation actually make use of it?

Paula Kuebler

When a student meets the College Board's Eligibility and Documentation Guidelines, receiving accommodations on our tests is not difficult. The Board developed its Eligibility and Documentation Guidelines more than eight years ago with significant assistance and input from professionals in the field of educating and assessing students with disabilities. A student is eligible for accommodations if the student:

• Has a disability that necessitates testing accommodations;
• Has documentation on file at school that supports the need for the requested accommodation and meets the Board's Guidelines for Documentation;
• Receives and uses the requested accommodations, due to the disability, for school-based tests.

The current Guidelines for Documentation to support the need for testing accommodations direct the applicant to:

• Specify the disability, as diagnosed
• Be current (e.g., evaluation; tests, as appropriate)
• Provide relevant educational, developmental, and medical history
• Describe the comprehensive testing and techniques used to arrive at the diagnosis
• Describe the functional limitations resulting from the disability
• Specify the accommodations being requested
• Include the professional credentials of the evaluators

There are two ways in which students may be determined eligible for accommodations based on disability

Verification

The more routine determination of eligibility is when the student/parent and school verify on the College Board's Student Eligibility Form that the student's disability documentation meets the College Board Guidelines. Or, Review students also may be determined eligible based on the Board's review of the student's disability documentation. A national panel of experts on educating and assessing students with disabilities helps the Board by reviewing students' disability documentation for its adherence to the College Board Guidelines. This panel is composed of:

At the higher education level

• all members hold doctoral degrees in school psychology, clinical psychology, or special education and work either as fulltime professors and/or researchers or directors of the Disability Support Services Programs;

• At the secondary education level all members hold doctoral or master's degrees in school psychology, clinical psychology, or special education and work as fulltime school psychologists or in special education; and

Private practitioners

All members hold doctoral degrees in school psychology or clinical psychology and conduct psycho-educational assessments and college counseling.

The most frequently requested accommodation is extended time. Accommodations are not approved if the student's documentation does not meet the Board's Guidelines. Most often, when the Board does not approve the requested accommodations it is because the student's documentation does not describe the comprehensive testing and techniques used to arrive at the diagnosis or the functional limitations resulting from the disability. In cases such as this, upon request of the applicant, the Board will make its qualified staff available for assistance. When a student is approved for accommodations, these accommodations may be used, or not used, on any of the Board's major tests (SAT I and II; PSAT/NMSQT; AP) and, with annual renewal notification by the student's school, the student may continue receiving accommodations on our tests.

Other Resources

• The College Board’s Services for Students with Disabilities