A Case Against Extended Test Time
Every time professors start handing out tests in college, a few students will excuse themselves, leaving the rest of us to struggle with the exam. They’re not ditching class — they’re walking to the library, where they’ll take the same exam as the rest of us with double the time.
Extended time has existed for years as a way of leveling the playing field for individual students with disabilities like ADHD, visual/auditory impairments, dyslexia, dyscalculia, Asperger syndrome — the list goes on. By giving a small percentage of students extra time to read, think, and answer questions, educators and administrators justly hope to level the playing field so their grades reflect their true intelligence, not the arbitrary amount of work they can get done in 45 minutes or an hour.
Both high schools and colleges in the United States are required to provide testing accommodations for students who fall under this category. Rightfully so — special education services help over six million students every year. To deny the value of this kind of education would be heartless and cruel. In theory, the practice seems logical, effective, and efficient.
The reality is far less ideal. As a normal-time test taker, it’s incredibly frustrating to hear classmates brag about their extra time designation and how “easy that last test was” when the majority of the class barely finished.
This is not a problem just in colleges — an audit of California College Board test takers in 2000 “showed a disproportionate number of white, affluent students receiving accommodations, igniting suspicions of exaggerated or nonexistent disabilities” according to a story from the New York Times. In 2006, ABC reported the practice of “diagnosis shopping — a cottage industry of doctors and medical professionals, all willing to give students the documentation they need to get the extra test time they want.”
“I had a friend who is a good math student but is no math brain, and she got extended time and got a perfect score on her math SAT,” Jane said.
That friend now attends an Ivy League.” — ABC News
According to the College Board, up to 46% of students at elite high schools receive special testing accommodations, including extra time. The natural proportion of learning disabilities should be somewhere around 2%.
While the College Board has worked towards correcting the issue, the underlying problem still persists: it’s impossible to determine who deserves extended time. Even with rigorous testing, stringent requirements, and medical professionals, the allure of a higher SAT score or GPA will draw out individuals looking to take advantage of the system.
You might be wondering: how much does extra time really help? If these tests are supposed to measure intelligence, how much does an extra few minutes help? Fortunately or unfortunately, the results are striking: in a study sponsored by The College Board from 2005 to 2008, students with average academic abilities and no learning disability scored approximately 43 points higher on their SAT when given extended time.
Even crazier: giving any designation of student too much time can actually hurt their scores, according to the same study. Even if a teacher is trying to do the right thing, they can end up disadvantaging their own students.
The first part of solving any problem is admitting there is one. This is a difficult subject to discuss, especially as colleges become more selective and the pressure to perform in high school mounts around the world.
The goal of most tests is to accurately gauge how well students have mastered the material taught during the course. By measuring how well students learn processes and retain content, schools generally hope to signal to colleges and future employers how well each student is generally trained to join the workforce.
Personally, I fail to see how “the ability to rapidly spit out information and solve problems in a timed setting” plays into that goal. Any manager I’ve ever worked with would much rather have a great solution in two hours than a mediocre, thrown-together attempt in an hour. Any timed content regurgitation or analysis, by extension, directly contradicts what students should generally be optimizing for.
My solution? No more timed tests. Give every student however long they want to spend on any exam. Period. We can simultaneously avoid the murky process of deciding which students deserve extended time, and give every student the same opportunity to perform academically.
Yes, an undefined period of time is nearly impossible to find in a high schooler’s schedule. Yes, this would require a significant amount of faculty buy-in before it would even have a chance of success in a normal academic environment. Yes, it sounds a little bit crazy. Maybe I’m a little crazy. Or maybe, in the grand scheme of things, a schedule change is a small price to pay for every student to get the chance they deserve to succeed.
