Really? If I don’t know the answer to a question, giving me more time to think about isn’t gonna help me. I can’t see that extra time would even help me make a better guess. If you’re guessing, too much time to think about it just messes you up.
Have you ever taken a test where you were somewhat pressed for time and when you put your pencil down at the end, you were just finished or not quite finished and you could have benefited from some extra time?
ADD is hardly the only documented condition that may receive testing accommodation. monstro, if you had a documented anxiety disorder vetted through disability services, you might take your exam in a private room.
I try to vary my classes, assignments, and exams so that students with different strengths and weaknesses have a range of products and processes on which I’m evaluating them. I ask students to pay attention to which modalities are best from them and which are worse. Then we can discuss compensatory strategies for each person’s least-prefered or least effective modalities, precisely because one’s graduate school or workplace may not make those accommodations. I see education as addressing not just content, but how to learn to one’s best ability. This will vary by person.
Is that the purpose of going to school? I’d add performance and ability to your “knowledge and comprehension” before thinking that’s anywhere close to a full picture of what school, and school testing, is supposed to do. In a chemistry lab, for example, you need to be able to figure out how to set up your experiment and complete it in the allotted time. The whole point of giving deadlines for homework and assignments is to teach students how to plan their time and get things done. Life is busy, and you need to learn to prioritize.
Organizational skills are just as important in the real world as all the knowledge and comprehension you can fit in your head. If you’re very smart, but too distracted or nervous or whatever to actually finish a test in the same time as your classmates, then your grade will be lower. And it should be lower. I’m not against accommodations for the truly disabled, but I have a hard time seeing ADD as a “learning disability”. What next - depression? I was too depressed to study, so can I do the test next week?
People are different. People have different abilities. There is no benefit to altering the testing scenarios so much that everyone gets the same grade so it’s more “fair”.
Not really, no.
My own personal opinion is that extra time for a test will not make up for lack of preparation.
It would be intersting to test that, though. Does extra time really help? Not sure how you would set that up.
At least here in Texas they also get extra time (from college board as well as the school system) if they have a 504 accomodation, which is a much lower standard to meet than qualifying for special ed.
It actually does on something like the PSAT, where the whole test is in 25 minute chucks, or on AP exams–in both cases, it’s quite possible, even normal, for people to simply not finish the multiple choice because they did not have enough time.
Anecdotally, I have taught AP courses for years and I have seen kids with extra time consistiently score at a higher level than peers that I judged to have a similar mastery of the materiel. Anecdotes aren’t worth much, of course, but I have seen this happen. I have also seen bright, knowledgeable kids who absolutely needed extra time to have any sort of accurate representation of their abilities. I have no idea how to set up the system so that we can serve the latter while excluding the former.
The fact that somebody can not finish their tests, does affect them for life. They are smart, but they have low grades because they never finish the tests. They don’t go on to college, because they can’t get in. Basically your slow at writing so you can’t get a higher education, when you are perfectly capable of full comprehension of the material. The slow writing condition which you can’t get past is used to hinder you from an education and betterment of yourself. I don’t see how somebody feels it’s right to maintain a known barrier to somebody’s education, because they have a disability that affects one part of their life, but not their intelligence.
What about alcoholism? That’s a disease as well. Should the school provide tests after noon so that alcoholic students aren’t too hungover to perform well? What if I self-medicate with alcohol? Should the classroom have an on-site bar (with a bar tender) to keep the drinks coming while I take the test?
I can certainly understand that some people with these newly found diseases face trouble in their daily lives. But that doesn’t change the reality that others have expressed: your boss won’t care. He won’t give you double time, or special work environments; he will simply hire someone else that can do the job in the required time. Learn to adapt to society or else you will fall behind…
I suppose it depends on how you define “intelligence.” A lot of people would say that processing information quickly is one aspect of intelligence.
I think that the example of an RN is a good one, since RN’s are often the last line of defense against medical misadventures. If my family member went to the hospital, I would definitely want him or her to be attended by an RN who is intelligent in the sense that he or she can process information quickly.
What can I say – it’s happened to me many times, and I did pretty well in college and grad school.
ADD doesn’t mean your slow at processing situations. Someone can have ADD and be quick witted. Obviously ADD is different for different people, and the school test accommodation doesn’t just aply to ADD. Eliminating the possible careers that people can train in because they have problems with an aspect of their personal being, is very wrong. Educating them and letting them try is the way to go. The jobs they can’t perform will be obvious when they apply the education to the situations a job presents. The incompetent will not rise to a position were they are dangerous. This isn’t just about medical careers, it’s about all careers. A slow witted intelligent person will not make it to a critical position in ER.
I’m a little confused.
Let me ask you this: Would an ADD-kid need extra time for a multiple choice test?
For what it’s worth, I’ve always found that standardized tests (and all tests, actually, minus a few that were simply terribly designed) allotted more time than was necessary for me to complete them, by a factor of about 1.7.
What can I say – maybe I have an undiagnosed (mild?) case of ADD.
That’s me! At least I feel that way a lot of the time.
Some not all. It varies.
I think that on a multiple choice test, one spends very little time actually bubbling in one’s guesses. The vast majority of one’s time is spent reading and thinking. So if you need double time on a multiple choice test, it’s because you are slower at processing information.
From what you say, it seems that at least some people with ADD are slower at processing information.
Or it’s because you get distracted when working out an answer, and take longer than you should because of that.
I think you are misinterpreting what Harmonious Discord is saying.
Well then, damn, everyone in the world has ADD. Trouble paying attention to things that don’t interest you? My God, it’s a worldwide epidemic!
Look, I know there is such a thing as ADD, and it can be debilitating in some cases. But if we’re going to give extra leniency to all the kids who have trouble focusing on their math homework because they hate it, we may as well just stop teaching math altogether. There has to be a way to sort out those who really and truly need the extra help - but help them through tutoring or extra classes, not by giving them twice as long to finish a test.
I guess I’m just having a hard time understanding how these kids can manage to focus properly to learn all the stuff and have all the knowledge, but then not be able to focus when it’s time to prove they know it.
Bob55, the way I take it is ADD/ADHD is not really a disorder but it is a real difference, difference in how people learn and interact. The present school setting is set up to teach non-ADD students, so ADD students have a automatic disadvantage. They should really be taught in a different manner, more hands on, mentoring IMHO. As long as the school system caters to non-ADD students I think it would be fair to provide a correction factor for the ADD students.
You also mention what happens when they get into the real world, my answer is simple, they should find their niche, ADD adults who find it usually do very well. They are not good at some things, excellent in others, usually in tasks that non-ADD adults are not so well in.