Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Students are suing a major college admissions test maker for allegedly selling information about their disability statuses with universities, which they say could hurt their chances at getting into schools and impact the rest of their lives.
When students register to take the ACT—a standardized test used for college admissions taken by more than a million high schoolers each year—they answer a barrage of personal questions. As part of this, they are asked to note if they have disabilities that require "special provisions from the educational institution."
The ACT, which is administered by ACT, Inc., is the only real competitor to the College Board's SAT exam. The lawsuit claims that the ACT is selling the data it gleans from those student questionnaires—connected directly to students' individual identities—to colleges, which then use it to make important decisions about admissions and financial aid.
"A lot of students and parents have no idea how these testing agencies, which are gatekeepers to college, are using very sensitive and confidential data in the college admissions process," Jesse Creed, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, told me in a phone call. "[Colleges are] hungry for disability data, because they have limited resources, and it's expensive to educate people with disabilities."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:59AM (5 children)
There has been an explosion of "disability". Most of this is fake. For tests, it gets people more time and food. Hey, I want that too! Be fair now. Can I haz disable? Outside college admissions, it has become the new welfare. Lots of people (my brother even -- this shit is real) are claiming disability to get money out of the VA and Social Security. It's mostly easy-to-fake stuff, using doctors that are eager to sign off on it.
On the other hand, there exists real disability. This does not mean that they should be everywhere. This costs society dearly. No matter who does the paying, that money is wasted and generally hurts all of us. (higher prices, higher taxes, slower service, businesses tipped over the edge into being non-viable, etc.) These days, you can go to the surf shop and find a special parking space. Just... NO. There is even a person flying passenger jets with a missing arm, which we know about because an FAA incident report mentions that it fell off while he was operating the plane.
Some people... I'm sorry, but society needs you to sit at home. Well that, or we could go all Hitler, which would be even better for our economy but some people take issue with that.
Lifetime earnings for some of these people will never earn back the money spent to accommodate them.
That's the legit ones though. Most of these test takers just wanted extra time. Essentially, they cheated.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:39AM (2 children)
Are you so stupid you cannot figure out that this is because the elites keep tightening the screws on the working class, who are collectively capable of doing something about it but too lazy to.
There is your proof that the working class is lazy. Every. Single. Fucking. Number continues to show that those dipshits are being robbed blind with massive wealth transfer to the wealthy 1%. And they do nothing. Nothing at all.
Dumb fucks or cows. Take your pick.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Wednesday August 15 2018, @10:24AM (1 child)
Sure, Comrade. Revolution when?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:56PM
The revolution won't.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:06PM (1 child)
Wait, a pilot's biological arm just fell off while flying a plane, and now it's missing? Did it just roll under the seat and no one can find it? How is it Sully gets a movie but not this guy!?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:41PM
Heh, no, it was an obviously ill-fitted prosthetic.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @01:06AM (8 children)
IIRC, the overlap between SAT and ACT isn't too large. You take one or the other (probably for free/paid for by the state) depending on the region you're in (ie, which one bribes the education people in your state), and pretty much every school accepts both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:34AM (7 children)
The real test is the SAT. The ACT is just the blue collar mass-marketed test being sold to suckers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:43AM (6 children)
I knew which school I wanted. It took both. ACT was half the price. So I took the ACT had enough to get in. Done. Would do it again.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:54AM (5 children)
Genuine question here - do your scores in High School count _at all_ toward your college entry? Or is it entirely based on your SAT/ACT score? In other words, would you potentially be able to coast through High School on straight D's, then ace the SAT and end up in a good college?
I ask because my country uses students' High School scores to determine College entry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:08AM
Well this was 25 years ago. So at the time it was the score and HS plus a battery of tests. The tests were to see which level of math/English you plugged into. This was also when getting a 1600 on the SAT or 35 on ACT meant you could write your ticket to any college. Think they wildly changed the scaling on them now. I had between 21 and 34 depending on subject. Like I said it was mostly just to get in and could not afford anything really good. I had to get above 18.
These days the higher end schools want 1500+ and a bunch of extra after school activities (the right kind) plus straight A's in the lowers. Lower end schools are not as picky and mostly just want to get you into a loan. The federal loan program has really screwed up a lot of what is going on. Not sure there is a good fix for that, that would not obliterate the whole system.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:02AM (3 children)
Depends on the college. There's no general standard. Most colleges will look at both. But high school standards can vary widely, hence the "standardized" score offered by SAT or ACT.
Many big colleges with overall high acceptance rate will sometimes have a minimum of X score on SAT/ACT *or* minimum grade average of X from high school.
More selective colleges often look at both, and the most selective programs will seriously consider lots of other factors (essays, recommendation letters, extracurricular activities, etc.).
Some colleges recently have decided the SAT/ACT are not as important and don't require them at all.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:20AM (2 children)
My high school GPA was 3.6. The valedictorian of the other high school in my town didn't even get interviewed.
The reason I got such low grades was that I regarded most of my high school classes to be a complete waste of my valuable time.
Instead, I was heavily into the theatre. I was a very poor actor so I focussed on sets and was the director of the set crew during my Junior and Senior years.
Also I started grinding, polishing and figuring my own telescope mirrors when I was twelve and kept that up partway through Caltech. Even among the astronomy department there was only one professor who had ever made his own telescope.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:28PM (1 child)
I graduated with a 2.1 GPA. My ACT scores were good though (perfect scores on English sections, near perfect science, 30 in math I think?), so I still got accepted everywhere I applied. Ultimately, finances were the deciding factor for choosing where to attend.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:05PM
Half of my class had 4.0 GPAs in high school. Some schools count pluses and minuses in their GPAs, so there were also lots of people who had 4.25 GPAs.
Oddly, many of my class were _required_ to attend a summer class before we started the regular school year. That class taught writing - despite having straight-As many of my classmates were unable to write even very simple essays.
I got 890 out of 900 on the Math II Achievement Test. That put me in the bottom half of my class.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:31AM
...thought this would be a story about Canberra. Am disappointed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:12PM (4 children)
It's worth noting here that the word "disability" may not refer to what most people immediately think of when they see "disability." Yes, there may be some who are blind (or severely visually-impaired), deaf (or severely impaired), have major dyslexia or other conditions that make learning in a "traditional" classroom difficult.
But unless you teach or are an upper-class parent, you may not be aware of the large trend in the past couple decades to deliberately get students classified as "disabled" to garner an advantage in things like standardized tests. Just for a couple data points, a few years back I taught in public high schools and averaged about 150 students per year that I taught directly. Out of those, I saw I think 1 student with a learning disability per year. So, about 1:150.
A year later, I taught in an elite private school, which not only had richer kids on average, but also much more talented ones. (I think 25-30% of the graduating class went to Ivy institutions every year.) However, there, I had 7 or 8 "learning disabilities" while teaching only 50 students per year. Roughly 1:7. I've since taught at universities and saw similar patterns for elite students vs. students at lesser institutions. Rich kids are at least 10-20 times more likely to get a diagnosis for a learning disability. (It's called "diagnosis shopping" in the trade.)
What's going on? It's simple. I had a friend who was a school psychologist at the time, and she explained it to me: there are so many vague disorders now that it's easy for rich parents with a kid who is lagging just a bit to get some sort of "diagnosis" for something. And then magically that kid gets extra time on standardized tests like SATs and ACTs. And since (as noted in TFA) the ACT stopped reporting those who got extra time back in 2002, those students get a significant advantage on a major admission tool for colleges. Additionally, they usually get extra time for class tests in high school, so they can raise their GPA. And if they choose, they can often get accommodations in college too, to help out their GPA to get them into med school or whatever.
I'm not saying the majority of parents abuse the system outright like this. And many of them are just trying to help their kids, and they happen to take them to a psychologist who identifies more nuanced learning problems than most parents would ever notice. But the point is that probably the majority of students who identify as "learning disabled" for the ACT are students who would probably succeed okay in a traditional classroom (though they might not do quite *as well*) and likely don't seem any different from "typical" students to the layman or even to an experienced educator.
Obviously I'm not arguing against accommodating those with disabilities. (I have two people in my extended family who had significant cognitive problems -- one borderline mentally retarded -- and needed support to get through school. So I'm familiar with those with major issues who the system was originally designed to help.) And major disabilities (like blind or deaf students) are often the most resource-intensive for colleges to deal with. But part of the story not highlighted in TFA may be colleges just trying to figure out how many students are they going to have to set up a special testing center "without distractions and with extra time" for, because that's the most common thing. I'm sure almost all students would benefit from taking a test in a distraction-free environment and with extra time, but large universities who have to accommodate lots of students with learning disabilities often can't just rely on a professor to allow a student to take a test in their office... they need separate testing centers.
Of course, the broader question I hinted at earlier is how this plays out as the new way for rich kids to get ahead. But that may be a separate discussion (nevertheless, it may also be something useful for colleges to consider in admissions).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:28PM (2 children)
Wouldn't surprise me. The wealthy have been doing similar things trying to cheat their way into gifted programs for which their children aren't ready for for years. It's not unusual for them to hire consultants to figure out how to bully their way past the testing procedures that apply to everybody else in order to get into those programs. And thanks to the lack of validity in the testing procedures, they can usually get in on appeal.
Really, the only way around a lot of it is to just detrack everybody and eliminate private schools. The public school problem would be fixed within a matter of a few years if the elites were forced to use the same schools as everybody else.
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:39PM
One specific example: to get into the elementary gifted program in my local district the child takes a test. The gifted teacher administers the test, scores it and registers the result. A kid with a score under but close to the cutoff can appeal. Looks objective, but there's a workaround for aggressive parents. They can take the kid to a third-party tester who provides a "compatible" test. The kid takes the test in the provider's location and the parents send the test result to the gifted program administrator. There is no vetting of the test provider. If they give the kid some of the answers no-one will know and no-one is asking. So you can pay for entry to the gifted program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:42PM
The overwhelming determinant of student success is their family's level of achievement or motivation. You would have to provide a stable family where education and behaving properly are valued and reinforced by the parents. You don't have to be rich to have this, but you can't be really ghetto either.
It's not money that makes for a good school. The city of Washington, DC spends more per pupil than its neighboring Northern Virginia suburbs. Care to guess which outperforms?
People don't like to hear this because it makes it sound like nothing can be done by the school to fix the gap. Sadly, the gap has proved stubborn to fix. Have hope, but don't expect miracles. Slow improvement, not fast fixes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:22PM
As a parent with two children that just got diagnosed with dyslexia, I think that there should be more done to allow dyslexics succeed in a "traditional" classroom. The statistics I got about it had 20% of the population affected by dyslexia to some degree, but the reading programs don't include methods to teach these people. As a result, there was a study that found that over 40% of the prison population was dyslexic, because without the help they need, that can't participate is society well.