Got Dyslexia?

Nationwide, only 2 percent of students who have taken the SAT over the past 10 years have done so untimed. Most of these students' diagnoses are presumably genuine. But in places like Greenwich, Conn., and certain zip codes of New York City and Los Angeles, the percentage of untimed test-taking is said to be close to 50 percent. These data aren't readily available from the College Board, which publishes only statewide figures on the numbers of "accommodated" SAT takers. But Abrams noticed that in the District of Columbia—the only city whose data is separately released by the board, since D.C. is a separate jurisdiction—7 to 9 percent of all SAT-takers typically get extra time on the test. The results clearly show that these "accommodated" children are not the city's poor and disadvantaged. Nationally, children who receive extra time on the test score lower as a group than students who don't. In 2005, they scored an average combined 975 on the math and verbal sections, compared to 1,029 for standard test-takers. This is what one would expect for children struggling to keep up because of disabilities. But the trend was reversed among the 264 children in D.C. who took untimed SATs in 2005. They scored a combined 1,105 on the tests, well above the national average and even further above the average of 957 among D.C. children who took timed tests.

I feel like a little bit of a hypocrite for posting about this, since I will soon be working for the Princeton Review, therefore making my money by teaching little priviledged sproglings how to goose their SAT scores up.