Last month on a springy Saturday afternoon in a tony Long Island town, Kim Gronich picked up her teen daughter from the ACTs. The high school junior was upset that she hadn’t answered all of the questions on the standardized test, which has a time limit of 3 hours and 35 minutes.
“Her time always runs out,” says personal injury lawyer Gronich, a mom of two.
Yet many taking the test that day didn’t face such issues: They had extra time because they’d been granted special accommodations after being diagnosed with a learning issue by a medical professional.
“She’s coming up against all of these kids who bought extra time from a doctor’s note. It’s outrageous and it’s rampant,” says Gronich, who is considering filing a lawsuit against her daughter’s school for helping so many get special treatment. “The other kids are there for hours more … These are the children who are cheating and getting away with it.”
When it comes to getting into top colleges, well-heeled parents will do anything to give their kids a leg up on the competition. An increasingly common tactic is getting kids extra time on the ACTs and SATs because of a psychological diagnosis that may or may not be legitimate. Previously, the testing companies alerted colleges when students received extra time, but they stopped doing so in 2003, opening the door for abuse.
“Parents with means will stop at nothing to get their kid into college — that’s what they do,” says Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, an education lawyer and staunch opponent of the accommodation abuse.
The ACT says roughly 5 percent of students taking the test receive accommodations, most commonly for extra time. Prior to 2003, it was less than 2 percent. The College Board, which administers the SATs, along with the PSATs and AP exams, says it’s also seen an uptick in accommodations in recent years — from 1.4 percent in 2012 to 3 percent last year.
Ed Colby, senior director of media and public relations for the ACT, says some parents are concerned that “some students who [have] wealthy parents can pay a doctor to say the student has a disability.” But, he continues, “If we receive documentation from a doctor, we trust that documentation — unless there’s some reason not to.”
When asked about the issue, Jaslee Carayol, associate director of media relations for the College Board, says her company “is committed to making sure that students with disabilities can take tests with the accommodations they need.”
Freedman believes the College Board is turning a blind eye to the abuse, for fear of invalidating the test and eroding its prestige.
Both the ACT and the College Board say more than 90 percent of those seeking accommodations are successful. To get extra time, parents can pay thousands of dollars to have their child evaluated for a learning disorder by a private neuropsychology evaluator, typically a psychologist of some sort. If they’re not successful, they’ll often try a different psychologist, ponying up thousands more dollars. Common diagnoses include ADHD and processing issues. The evaluation is sent to the school, where it’s typically accepted. In the unlikely event it’s not, some parents hire a lawyer to appeal. When it comes time for a student to register for a standardized test, the school usually sends out a request on behalf of the student.
“More and more people are claiming to have these disabilities,” says Sam Abrams, a Manhattan academic and professor at Sarah Lawrence College who closely follows this issue. “Diagnoses can be trumped up. Severe anxiety disorder is ramped up like nobody’s business. It’s a catchall that nobody can argue with — it’s self-reported. If you don’t like the diagnosis of one person, you’ll find someone to find another therapist to diagnose your ‘anxiety.’ It’s so easy to get those diagnoses today.”
Dr. Joshua Shifrin, a psychologist with offices in New City, NY, and Livingston, NJ, sees kids from elementary age through high school and charges anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 per evaluation. He typically signs off on a diagnosis that will lead to an accommodation for 80 to 90 percent of patients, which he says can include extended time, use of a calculator or a laptop for class exams and standardized tests.
“Many parents come to me when their child needs extra time,” he says. “If I can ethically do it, and it makes sense, I’ll try to be helpful and work with the parents … [but] there are times when the child won’t qualify and the parents will push for a diagnosis, but if it doesn’t support a diagnosis, I can’t give it to them.”
While 30 percent of the kids coming to his office to be evaluated are high schoolers, he doesn’t view it as suspicious that their learning issues didn’t surface earlier, long before the SATs.
“Sometimes a student slips through the cracks,” he says. “By the time they get to high school and the work gets more challenging, an issue can manifest itself.”
Freedman says particularly savvy parents are laying the groundwork earlier, requesting accommodations in the lower grades and not waiting until the middle of high school.
“If you ask for it as a junior,” she says, “it’s suspect.”
Those who aren’t working the system are crying foul.
“People don’t need the accommodations, and they get the extra time. I don’t think it’s fair,” says one senior at an elite NYC public school, who declined to give her name. She’s tried to get her parents to get her a doctor’s note, but they don’t think she has a legitimate need for more time.
‘People don’t need the accommodations, and they get the extra time. I don’t think it’s fair.’
“It’s really annoying,” she says. “Those kids get better scores, and the [colleges] don’t know how they got them. It makes for an unfair playing field.”
Susan, an Upper East Side mother, says one of the classmates of her 17-year-old son, Andrew, got extra time for scoliosis and was allowed to take the ACT over a four-day period because she supposedly can’t sit for very long. When she saw pictures of the girl on social media taking a seven-hour flight to Europe, she was suspicious.
“It’s no longer about inner-city versus affluent — this is about affluent versus affluent,” because rich parents can afford the private diagnoses, Susan says. Her son estimates that roughly 40 percent of his classmates have accommodations.
But Susan isn’t above gaming the system for Andrew’s benefit. He gets extra time because of his ADHD, even though, Susan says, it’s under control.
“Why would I take it away from him?” she asks. “The colleges don’t know he has extra time.”
Wednesday Martin, an Upper West Side mother of two who chronicles the habits of wealthy New Yorkers in her book, “Primates of Park Avenue,” isn’t that surprised by the practice, though she finds it upsetting. “It’s the same kind of insider trading [and] secret practice that happened when the very rich hired Disney guides with disability passes so they and their kids never had to wait on a line,” she says. “Accommodations are supposed to level the playing field for these kids. Instead they’re being abused to the disadvantage of the kids that need them the most.”
One Lower East Side mom regrets not getting her daughter, now a freshman at a top public university, more minutes.
“I felt like I missed the boat,” she says. “I don’t think a couple of more points would have gotten her into Harvard, but you can always do better with more time.”
Her daughter wasn’t happy that her mom didn’t go the extra mile. “She said, ‘You should have done it for me — I had to take the test in the normal amount of time.’”
But Abrams portends a slippery slope as students graduate and leave the nest.
“It’s not just a high school thing anymore — it pervades college and beyond,” he says. “At some point, this snowflake behavior and entitlements will have to end when they get into the real world.”