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The Problems with Exam Accommodations for Students with Disabilities 

I have many friends who receive accommodations on exams due to labels of exceptionalities. Though I do not doubt that these accommodations are justified and helpful in the majority cases, certain individual cases have made me wonder about the fairness of the whole “exceptionality” concept. I have a friend, for example, who once took 8 hours to write a high school English exam. As a result of being diagnosed with dyslexia when we were young, she had been labelled as having a learning disorder, and therefore was eligible for extra time (with stopwatch) for exams. For those of you who don’t know, stopwatch time means that an invigilator is signalled every time the student wants to take a break, and exam time is stopped until the student chooses to resume work on the test. I do not question that this accommodation has the potential to be very helpful for individuals with dyslexia, who may have trouble reading questions or writing responses, but otherwise demonstate a great understanding of course content. During this particular English exam, however, my friend told me that she took many long breaks, during which she thought through her essay argument and how to present it. Hearing this story lead me to wonder whether accommodations intended to “level the field” for students with disabilities may sometimes put them at unintended, and in some cases, even drastic advantage. In this particular English exam, my own essay, as well as those written by many of my classmates, had been cut short due to time restraints. I believe that having extra time to work on the structure of the paper, quality of writing, and quantity of arguments would have significantly improved my finished product, and am sure that many of my classmates would have said the same if asked.

I decided to look a little deeper into the research behind this question and quickly discovered that the data does not justify my concern. Runyan (1991) examined the effect of extra time on reading comprehension scores for university students with and without learning disabilities. This study first noted participant scores on the test after 20 minutes, and then again after they had completed the task. Students with disabilities tended not to finish the test within the 20 minutes, but typical students generally did. Items that the students with learning disabilities had answered at this point, however, were correct. When allowed sufficient time to finish the test, scores in the learning disability group improved significantly. The scores between students with and without learning disabilities were significantly different in the control condition (20 minute time limit), but not different in the extra time condition. This seems to indicate that, at least for the sample examined in this study, providing students with disabilities with extra time does not put them at an advantage over other students, but rather really does “level the playing field”. In other words, it removes obstacles that prevent students from demonstrating their true abilities. The evidence seems to support the fact that students with disabilities are able to perform at the same level as other students, as long as conditions are right. This is great, because this is the intention and assumption behind making available learning resources available to certain students, and exactly what an eduator would hope to see.

My original conclusion based on this was that I was wrong to question the fact that my friend took 8 hours to finish a high school English exam, but I still am not completely satisfied with that conclusion. Though Runyan (1991) found support for the fact that accommodations can help learning disabled students (without putting them at an advantage over other students), I think that that this finding needs to be generalized with extreme caution. Students with learning disables are a heterogeneous group, but the accommodations offered are often one-size-fits-all. Extra time, stopwatch time, computer access, and availability of a note-taker are examples of commonly offered services for students with disabilities. But can we really say that a student with ADHD benefits from additional learning services in the same way that a student with dyslexia does? What about a student who once had a parasite (yes, I do know someone who obtained an exceptional label after contracting a parasite while travelling)? If this massively diverse group of students all need the same things in order to succeed, why don’t students without labels need those things?

My hunch is that this is a case of theory and practice not aligning. Though according to the data, accommodations for students with disabilities are overwhelmingly helpful and fair, I just do not see this playing out in the real world. Unfortunately, I do not think that it can play out in the real world in the intended way until definitions and assessment measures for all learning disabilities are refined and validated. I have a feeling that once this is done, it will be found that all students fall along infinite points on a spectrum for every cognitive ability. We all have some level of attention, some level of reading ability, some level of working memory, the list goes on… Cut-offs for diagnostic criteria are fairly arbitrary, so that a difference of one item on an ADHD questionnaire can make the difference between an individual receiving a diagnosis or not. Even within diagnostic categories, there is a lot of variation. It is entirely possible that someone who just makes the cut-off for ADHD is much more similar in ability to someone who missed diagnostic criteria by one item, than they are to someone who falls at the diagnosable extreme. Still, the two who scored over a particular criterion are the two considered to have ADHD, and therefore given the same accommodations, while the student who missed diagnosis by one item receives no accommodation whatsoever. The problem here is obvious. In a perfect world, we would all have strong understandings of where on the spectrum we fall on all cognitive traits (and possibly even have knowledge of the situational variables that mediate our scores). In a perfect world, we would all have accommodations unique to us, designed to minimize the impact that our weaknesses have on us in testing/assessment situations. I am very aware of the utopic quality in this vision is, but a girl can keep on dreaming…

How Learning Disabilities Work:

We noticed this:

So we categorized!

But tail giving backfired because now we have:

Reference:

Runyan, M. K. (January 01, 1991). The effect of extra time on reading comprehension scores for university students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24, 2, 104-8.