Easy solution, if you take extra accommodations, its noted on your degree. If you are an employer, do you want someone who manipulates the system in these ways? Me neither. Maybe note exactly the accommodations on the degree so those with real disabilities aren't caught up in this.
Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
611–620 of 1001 posts
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.
I mean... usually those tests check the correctness of answers too, so you're comparing students under the same circumstances, evaluating how much (writing, calculations.... whatever) they're able to do, correctly of course, within an alotted time period. If someone can correctly solve 17 math problems in that time and someone else can do 21, the second one is "better" than the first, since they're both faster and th…
But where is that level of speed distinction important? I just don't know anywhere where being 10% faster translates into much actual real value. If you can write a function in five minutes and it takes this other person 5.5 minutes -- do you really view that as the key difference in ability? Even in time constrained situations, compute/processing speed is almost never the issue.
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who are you to say what should be included or not, that something can be gauged as mild or not, and that there should be a treshold?
I have firsthand experience being diagnosed and prescribed medication for ADHD within about half an hour of self-reporting mild symptoms with a physician remotely, for one, so perhaps I'm more of an authority on this subject than most commenters here. I suppose it would be equally trivial to seek an ASD diagnosis, since Asperger's is now lumped in with autism and classified as a disability despite not being one.
> I have firsthand experience being diagnosed and prescribed medication for ADHD within about half an hour of self-reporting mild symptoms with a physician remotely
Can confirm; I was your physician.
(Anyone can say anything online!)
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another big accommodation request is extra time on tests. Maybe the real problem is we are testing people on how fast they can do something not if they can do something. In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. I suspect there is a correlation between people who think things through and people who do well in school.
> In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly. Yes, but to go even further: timed tests often test, in part, your ability to handwrite quickly rather than slowly. There is great variation in handwriting speed — I saw it as a student and as a professor — and in classrooms, we should no more be testing students for handwriting speed than we should be testing them on athletic ability.…
I can not think of a single test I have ever taken where I could be limited by handwriting speed. Most of the time on tests is spent thinking, not writing.
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#615New York Times had an interesting podcast recently where they talked about how so many children are being diagnosed with autism to the point where it's hurting the severely autistic student population ( https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/podcasts/the-daily/autism... ). There's a finite set of resources pooled for special needs students, and now most of these students have relatively minor symptoms compared to those w…
The rate of autism diagnosis is really off the charts in MN these days...
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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who are you to say what should be included or not, that something can be gauged as mild or not, and that there should be a treshold?
I have firsthand experience being diagnosed and prescribed medication for ADHD within about half an hour of self-reporting mild symptoms with a physician remotely, for one, so perhaps I'm more of an authority on this subject than most commenters here. I suppose it would be equally trivial to seek an ASD diagnosis, since Asperger's is now lumped in with autism and classified as a disability despite not being one.
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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of people think a test should measure one thing (often under the slightly "main character" assumption that they'll be really good at the one truly important thing). Tests usually measure lots of things, and speed and accuracy / fluency in the topic is one. It certainly shouldn't be entirely a race either though. Also if a test is time constrained it's easier to mark. Give a failing student 8 hours and they'll wr…
> Also if a test is time constrained it's easier to mark. Give a failing student 8 hours and they'll write 30 pages of nonsense. Sure that makes sense to me, but I don't see why this would not also apply to ADHD students or any other group. And of course, there needs to be some time limit. All I am saying is, instead of having a group that gets one hour and another group that gets two hours, just give everyone two ho…
> All I am saying is, instead of having a group that gets one hour and another group that gets two hours, just give everyone two hours.
This means that someone fully abled can think about and solve problems for 1h and 50 minutes, and use 10 minutes to physically write/type the answers, and someone with a disability (eg. missing a hand, using a prosthetic) only gets eg. one hour to solve the problems and one hour to write/type the answers due to the disablity making them write/type more slowly.
Same for eg. someone blind, while with proper eyesight, you might read a question in 30 seconds, someone blind reading braille might need multiple minutes to read the same text.
With unlimited time this would not be a problem, but since speed is graded too (since it's important), this causes differences in grades.
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#618I got 1.5 extra test time. I would have never graduated otherwise. I didn't use it my senior year though. To this day, I read slower than most, I have to reread things when others don't need to. Intelligence and having learning disabilities are not corollated as this article suggests.
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eliminating time limits on standardized tests is infeasible; it would require changes to processes on a state or national levels, and mindsets in education as a whole. It's also a complex enough issue that you'd have factions arguing for and against it six ways to Sunday. It's not going to happen. In contrast, special-casing few disadvantaged students is a local decisions every school or university could make indepen…
You say it is infeasible for standardized tests, but why? Is it that much harder to give 50 students and extra hour than to give 5 students an extra hour? Or just design the tests so that there is ample time to complete them without extra time. But putting aside standardized tests, in the context of this discussion about Stanford, I think these accommodations are being used for ordinary tests given for classes, so St…
But how do you differentiate students who are able to finish the test (correctly) in an hour from those needing 2 hours for the same task?
In real life, you're rarely given unlimited time for your tasks, and workers who can do more in less time are considered better than the ones who always need deadine extensions, so why not grade that too?
Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tests usually measure lots of things, and speed and accuracy / fluency in the topic is one. Why are you trying to measure speed though? I can't think of any situation where someone was like: you have exactly 1 minute to integrate this function, or else. Fluency yes, but speed is a poor proxy for fluency.
Why is it a poor proxy? Someone who really understands the concepts and has the aptitude for it will get answers more quickly than someone who is shakier on it. The person who groks it less may be able to get to the answer, but needs to spend more time working through the problem. They're less good at calculus and should get a lower grade! Maybe they shouldn't fail Calc 101, but may deserve a B or (the horror) a C. M…
> Someone who really understands the concepts and has the aptitude for it will get answers more quickly than someone who is shakier on it
That seems like a big assumption that i don't believe is true in general.
I think its true at an individual level, as you learn more about a subject you will become faster at it. I don't think its true when comparing between different people. Especially if you throw learning disabilities into the mix which is often just code for strong in one area and weak in another, e.g. smart but slow.