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Has Achieved Nirvana![]() |
https://www.axios.com/newslett..._term=emshare#story0 This one cuts exceedingly close to home for me.
One of my daughters got extra time in high school and on the SAT and in college. Let me be clear: she absolutely needed it. She's bright, but has slow processing speed. And, what's worse, when she's anxious, she gets even slower. So time pressure tests are very bad for her. But I have no delusions that not every kid in her situation would have gotten those accommodations. We chose to live in a phenomenal school district, where necessary accommodations were met with an "of course" and not resistance. We paid for expensive neuropsych testing, and refreshed it ... she was tested three times, once in elementary school, once before high school, once before college. We applied for extra time to the College Board and were denied, and then we appealed, three different times, the last time hiring a specialist lawyer, until the appeal was granted. And we met with the disability offices at each of her top choice colleges, to get a feel for how they'd respond to her situation. I make no apologies for that. I wanted to do the best for my daughter, and so I wrote checks and drove her to appointments and attended meetings and twisted arms in the junior high and the high school and drove her to interviews at colleges across the country. And I broke not a single law or rule in doing so, I was merely an aggressive advocate and a willing spender of money. I didn't ask for anything to which I did not think she was entitled. But I also know that not every child in her circumstance could have afforded to do most of that. And I feel badly about that, because every child in her circumstance should have gotten the same accommodations she got, and I am quite sure they don't. I won't disadvantage my daughter to satisfy my guilt, but I do feel badly about it. | ||
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Has Achieved Nirvana![]() |
My concern is whether my son will be, in effect, disadvantaged by not getting extra time. Specifically my concern is that more and more people are abusing this, so the honest people might be at a disadvantage. Especially in a Westchester school district. And if it’s this bad now, imagine what it will be like in 2026. In the recent admissions scandal, one thing they did in all cases is request more time for their clients. They had special psychiatrists in on the gag. One of the pieces I read talked about how a number of appeals are usually necessary but usually successful in the end.
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Does This Avatar Make My Butt Look Big? Minor Deity ![]() |
They could level the playing field by not having a time limit. The test can start at 8 a.m. and end at 9 pm. So long as you are ther at 8, you’re good to go. Leave when you’re done. Take as many breaks as you want, so long as you don’t communicate with anyone. Have the gym open, with basketballs and volleyballs for burning off energy. Perfectly fair. | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana![]() |
That's a different test. The SAT (and the ACT, but in a different way) are supposed to impose time pressure. It's a feature, not a bug. The problem then is that not everyone moves at the same speed. Are we willing to decide that processing speed is an essential element of intelligence? | |||
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Minor Deity![]() |
But should it be a feature? Maybe imposing a time limit means we're measuring a skill that, while perhaps useful in the working world, is no more important than other skills that people would have a chance to reveal if the time limits were removed or made so generous as to be irrelevant. I say this as someone who has virtually never had a time problem on tests. (On the one occasion when I did, a lifetime of acing standardized tests left me arrogant enough to opine that the test was poorly designed.) Removing the time limit wouldn't disadvantage me in getting a large percent of the answers right, so I would still do well, but it would remove my "speediness privilege." More people would do well and the colleges using the tests to judge applicants would have to figure out how to interpret them. I don't see that as a terrible problem to have. I prefer it to the current system with the drawbacks in fairness described above. Just last week, I had an editor tell me while negotiating a book contract that he'd "rather it be good than fast." Maybe our emphasis on speed is more of a convenience for the people monitoring the test than a measure of someone's aptitude for the desired skills.
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Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana ![]() |
There is a very high correlation between simple reaction time and IQ score. ![]() | |||
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Has Achieved Nirvana![]() |
Well, if it’s not, then it’s not, and that feature is a bug after all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they relaxed the time constraint at some point.
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Minor Deity![]() |
Perhaps this is a stupid question, but would that correlation hold if IQ tests weren't timed? Or maybe they're not all timed. I don't really know.
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Pinta & the Santa Maria Has Achieved Nirvana ![]() |
Some are, some aren't. Most are. It's a good question. But it's a facetious statement (mine). Simple RT is just that--a simple measure of how quickly you can react to a basic stimulus (e.g., hit the button as soon as you possibly can when the light flashes). This can be typically done by a college freshman in about 36 msec. In other words, I was just being a pot-stirrer. ![]() | |||
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Minor Deity![]() |
Most of the ones I took in school were timed. Once, though, a bunch of education students came out to the school and the whole fifth grade was sent to the auditorium where each of us sat with someone learning to give one-on-one IQ tests. If those were timed, the allotted time was very generous. I remember the day very well. We went through all the questions. She took me through the vocabulary tests all the way to college level. We literally ran out of things to do. She finally sat looking around the room where all the other kids were still working with their tester, unsure what to do with me next. She eventually decided to take me to the teachers' lounge and feed me sugar cookies. It's interesting how indelible those memories are. I can't remember what she looked like, but I can see the papers I wrote on, and I can see and smell the sugar cookies.
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Has Achieved Nirvana![]() |
Then I must be pretty dumb, because my physical reaction time is pretty slow. I compensate by anticipating, like when I'm driving, but I'm just not that quick. In an academic context, however, my reaction speed is very fast. I benefit from the same "speediness privilege" that Mary Anna mentioned. And, when I am under time pressure or a deadline, I hyperfocus, and I get faster. My daughter, however, is very much the opposite.
Most people want both. And, in many contexts, speed is synonymous with lower cost. As one example, assuming quality is equivalent, a lawyer who can write memoranda and briefs 50% faster can do 50% more work. I used to work for a guy who made it a point of pride with clients, if they asked for something by Friday, to promise it by Wednesday. If you couldn't do quality work quickly, you couldn't work for him. | |||
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