Op-Ed Contributor

Time to Think

By MARK FRANEK

Philadelphia

AS high school juniors file into classrooms for their SAT's on

Saturday, there will probably be some chatter about how more than 4,000 of last fall's tests were scored too low. What they probably won't be aware of is how many of their fellow students may end up with higher

scores because they are allowed more time to take the test. Last year,

more than 40,000 of the two million SAT takers were granted special

accommodations, mainly because of learning disabilities. This

represents a doubling in the past decade and a half.

In a perfect world, accommodations on the SAT would level the playing

field for all test-takers with learning disabilities. Is that the case?

The College Board, the overseer of the SAT, declines to give figures on

the family incomes of students who get extra time.

It would be a good guess, however, that such accommodations are not

being awarded fairly across race and socioeconomic lines — it generally

takes a lot of time, energy and, in some cases, money to get on the

accommodations list in the first place. A student must have his

learning disability documented by a psychologist, and then use the

accommodations recommended by the psychologist on tests at his own high

school.

The trend in requesting extensions troubles many schools and teachers.

While they made no mention of requests for accommodations, more than

200 high-school administrators in January submitted a petition to the

College Board that criticized the length of the test and asked the

board to give students the option of taking each of the test's three

sections (writing, math and critical reading) on different days.

But this recommendation would succeed only in making an already unfair

situation worse by increasing the overall cost of the test for

students. The SAT is not too long — it's too short. The fairest

solution would be to make it untimed for everyone.

Extra-time accommodations fall into two categories: time and a half (so

the regular 3 hour 45 minute test swells to just over five and a half

hours) and double time. But when scores are reported to colleges, there

is no indication whether students had the usual amount of time, or

more.

This lack of transparency is untenable. If we continue to look to the

SAT as a major gatekeeper to the nation's colleges and universities, we

need to understand what got us to this point and also have an honest

discussion about the potential solutions.

Back in 1999, a California man named Mark Breimhorst sued over the

longstanding practice of flagging SAT scores as "obtained under special

conditions" when test takers were given extra time. Mr. Breimhorst, who

needed accommodations on tests because he has no hands, argued that

this practice violated the rights of students with disabilities by

potentially identifying them as disabled to admissions officers (the

human gatekeepers) and thus forcing disabled test takers to forgo

accommodations.

It was an effective argument, and the College Board, after some

foot-dragging, agreed to drop the notation in 2002. What has been

happening ever since is a little hard to quantify, but it is happening

in just about every high school. More students are documenting their

learning disabilities and using accommodations in their classes, the

prerequisite set by the College Board for using accommodations on the

SAT. For the record, I am not against accommodations for students at

their own schools. In my 15 years of teaching, when students have asked

me for an extension on an assignment for any reasonable reason, I have

given them one.

But what my colleagues and I are noticing is that accommodations for

the SAT in other areas — using tests with large type, for example — are

not increasing nearly as quickly as extended time (the College Board

said it couldn't say if this was the case). It is clear to all of us on

the inside that what is driving this phenomenon is the pressure cooker

known as the SAT.

The solution is simple: keep the test to one day but end the time

limits. The College Board can surely reduce the number of overall

questions on the test (there are now a whopping 170, mostly multiple

choice, plus one essay) and design them so that they go from

embarrassingly easy to impossible except for the top percentile of

students to answer even without a deadline.

That goal should be to give everyone a chance to tackle every question

and eliminate time as a factor — thereby accommodating the learning

style of all children, including those with disabilities. The College

Board needs to take its test back to the drawing board. The answers to

these design challenges and issues of fairness may not be as easy as

multiple choice, but they can be found.

Mark Franek is the dean of students at the William Penn Charter School.