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Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

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Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#701

Post by bruce511 »

kenjackson wrote: post #612
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. Frankly test taking doesn't correlate to job performance well by any metric.

For example, get 90% on a test, that's applauded and earns a distinction. In a job context, 90% gets you fired. I don't want a worker who produces "90% well soldered boards". I don't want software that runs on "90% of our customers computers". Or a bug in every 10 lines of released code.

A test puts an arbitrary time limit on a task. In the real world time is seldom the goal. Correctness is more important. (Well, the mechanic was going to put all the wheel nuts on, but he ran out of time.)

College tests are largely a test of memory, not knowledge or understanding. "List the 7 layers of OSI in order." In the real world you can just Google it. Testing understanding is much harder to mark though, Testing memory is easy to set, easy to mark.

Some courses are moving away from timed tests, and more towards assignments through the year. That's a better measure (but alas also easier to cheat. )

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#702

Post by stuffn »

vl wrote: post #645
skeeter2020 wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steriods will give you a massive physical advantage too. If you're not doing something with a governing body and get them prescribed you're golden.

If you have enough your own testosterone then doing TRT is more harm than good. But once you get older and don’t anymore - TRT is golden.

The issue of course is "medical science" has continually lowered what is normal. Men 50 years ago had significantly higher testosterone than today. The blood work normal CI reflects this decrease. In reality, any man lower than 600 should probably be supplementing TRT. However, you're not likely to get it prescribed before you are below 300, and even then, it'll be just enough to get you back over the curve. There's basically no risk to it as long as you keep your total test The median total testosterone for the cohort born after 2000 is 391 ng/dL. 20 years before it was ~550 ng/dL. 20 years before that we were above 600 ng/dL. Men are falling ill with more chronic illness, having more sexual dysfunction, and have more feminized features. We should probably be asking ourselves why this is happening rather than adjusting blood work CI's down.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#703

Post by delichon »

SabrinaJewson wrote: post #587
delichon wrote: post #24

If 38% of the top 1% of students have learning disabilities then I'd expect students near the mean to be 100% learning disabled, if those words have any meaning left.

You know that “learning disability” isn’t a synonym for “stupid”, right? We neither call people who are less academically able “disabled”, nor are disabled people necessarily less able to work academically (apart from some more debilitating mental disorders, which would be a disability). In fact, it’s quite the opposite: the word “disability” exists _precisely_ to distinguish “intelligence” – which is what the univer…

I have been under the impression that "learning disability" means that you are less able to learn than your peers. Whether that deficit is on account of intelligence, health, etc., is a different subject.

According to your definition, you can be far superior to your peers at learning and still be learning disabled. If you are looking for stupid people, you have found one, because I don't understand that.

Because of all of the ways that students can be disadvantaged at learning, every student needs accommodations. There are no students who can't benefit from a highly responsive learning environment. Being able to benefit from that does not make any student learning disabled, just different, and they are all different.

But if you're just different, and not disabled, you lose victim cred, preferences and funding.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#704

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #614
jbullock35 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I had an abstract algebra exam where for the last question, I couldn’t remember the theorem to do it in a sensible way, but could see that the brute force approach only needed ~40 modular multiplications. That came down to the wire!

Shockingly I got full credit, although the professor probably picked a bigger prime for her next class.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#705

Post by smcg »

antisthenes wrote: post #681
Aurornis wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being diagnosed doesn't immediately mean you should be accommodated. This is the loophole. Universities aren't the ones diagnosing, they're the ones accommodating. The current meta-game is for parents and students to share notes about which doctors will diagnose easily. Between word of mouth and searches on Reddit, it's not that hard to find doctors in any metro area who will provide diagnoses and accommodation req…

Wow. Great to know we're basically raising an entire generation without any integrity. Can't wait to be in a nursing home where all the staff are trying to meta-game for lowest amount of responsibility rather than caring for the elderly. And believe me, I'm the last person to disparage the truly disabled or those down on their luck. But 38% in a developed country is just straight up insane. Not to mention that if you…

I have bad news for you about existing nursing homes.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#706

Post by HDThoreaun »

aynyc wrote: post #686
HDThoreaun wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please note that, this doesn't take away resource for regular kids, in fact, classrooms with IEP student get more teachers so everyone in that class benefits. There is a limited amount of money in the school system. When resources are assigned to one place they are taken away from somewhere else. The kids in the class without IEP students are getting boned by this policy.

That’s just a callous myth.

You think schools have unlimited money?

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#707

Post by jph00 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #588
jph00 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A third is about as common as astigmatism in >50 year olds (like me, for instance!) I wear glasses to accommodate this disability, and as a result have nearly no practical problems due to it. I don't think a problem having a high frequency means that we should decide it doesn't matter or need rectification.

That's true, but astigmatism: - is clearly defined - can be measured objectively (with autorefractors, keratometers, corneal topographers) - can be corrected cheaply ($20 glasses) to eliminate any disadvantage in performance or efficiency Neurodivergence: - is not clearly defined - cannot be measured objectively, and is diagnosed using behavioral observations and cognitive tests - may rely on 'accommodations' that, i…

You misunderstand how neurodivergence is be handled in education. It isn't a single diagnosis, and does not have a single accommodation. We use a catch-all word because it makes it easier to talk about as a collection of issues, but that's not how it's diagnosed or treated.

If you would find wearing noise blocking ear muffs, or sitting on a bouncy chair, or using a typing instrument instead of writing, improves your performance on a test, then yes that should be permitted.

(I do also think it would be a good idea if people had longer for many tests or tests had less on them. That kind of speed is rarely an important part of real world workplaces so those tests are rewarding low-value skills.)

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#708

Post by Terr_ »

lazide wrote: post #586
Lammy wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is when high school chemistry class covers emulsifiers and you remember it

But can’t remember if you ate today or not.

It's 5PM and I haven't eaten yet, good reminder. /joking-but-factually-true

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#709

Post by wildzzz »

WalterBright wrote: post #652
bawolff wrote: post #434

Earlier 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.

Caltech had timed exams (2-3 hours) and infinite time exams, at the discretion of the professor. The students hated the infinite time ones, because nobody knew how much time other students spent on the test so one felt obliged to spend inordinate amounts of time on it. Besides, if you couldn't solve the exam problems in 2 hours, you simply didn't know the material.

A couple of my upperclassmen professors used open-everything exams, notes, textbook, even the Internet was allowed. Although time was tight so if you felt like you had to Google something, you better not have to do it a second time.

Re: Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

#710

Post by cynicalpeace »

acedTrex wrote: post #42
cynicalpeace wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're quite obviously not. They're lying so they can get unlimited time on the test and/or look at their phone. They're smart kids that see a loophole in the system. They will take advantage!

> They're smart kids that see a loophole in the system. They will take advantage! This is just not an acceptable cultural viewpoint. Abusing a permissive system must be discouraged.

Agreed. You have to really narrow the definition of "disabled"

Of course, anyone who fears falling outside the definition would fight that vehemently

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