Important SAT and ACT Changes on Accommodations

The College Board has announced important changes to they way they determine testing accommodations for students with disabilities, effective January 1, 2017.

The new policy will apply to students who have IEPs or 504 Plans and to private school students with a formal, school-based plan. It requires school testing accommodation coordinators to ask only two questions when submitting most requests for student accommodations:

• Is the requested accommodation(s) in the student’s plan? and
• Has the student used the accommodation(s) for school testing?

If the answer is yes to both questions, eligible students can be approved to receive most accommodations on College Board exams. These exams include the SAT, PSAT, NMSQT, SAT subject tests and AP exams.

The College Board president, David Coleman, noted in an announcement of this change that, “The school staff knows their students best, and we want to cut down on the time and paperwork needed to submit a testing accommodations request.” That may be true, but steps by the U.S. Department of Justice to make sure the testing organizations comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act were undoubtedly also a factor in the College Board decision. We wrote about this back in 2015, including links to the Justice Department guidelines. Earlier in 2016, the Justice Department began an inquiry into testing accommodations following a number of complaints. 

Another policy change by both the College Board and the ACT exam involves students who are English Language Learners (ELL). 

For the first time, the ACT exam will offer accommodations to ELL who are enrolled in a school's ELL program, starting in the fall of 2017. These will include:

• More time on the test: up to time-and-a-half
• Use of an approved word-to-word bilingual glossary (one that has no word definitions)
• Testing in a non-distracting environment (i.e., in a separate room)
• Test instructions provided in the student's native language (including Spanish and a limited number of other languages initially)

Similar accommodations will be made available effective starting in January 2017 (although extended time will not be available until later that year) by the College Board for its exams given to enrolled ELL students taking state funded exams in school. 

Tips for Students

Students, parents, and schools need to keep in mind that these new paths to accommodations are not foolproof. The College Board uses terms like "most" when referring to students with disabilities and the accommodations to be extended. 

Furthermore, as with their prior process for approving accommodations, it is important that these are not just listed in an IEP or 504 Plan, but are used on a regular basis. Students who have extended time on exams, for example, need to utilize this accommodation if they want to have it applied to their standardized testing. 

To be applicable to the SAT and other exams, accommodations must be formalized. An IEP or 504 Plan will do this. So will a private school's formal written plan. But extended time or other accommodations given informally by teachers or even school-wide without a formal plan will not qualify for this streamlined review. 

Likewise, the accommodations offered to ELL do not necessarily apply to all of these students. The College Board will extend its streamlined accommodations process only to ELL taking a state-funded SAT during the school day. It is not clear how this might apply to all ELL. 

English Language Learners

Required professional development courses vary greatly in quality, so it is a real delight when a day devoted to accumulating necessary Continuing Legal Education credits turns out to be a truly fascinating series of lessons in areas that attorneys working in the field of education and special education don't always consider.

Such was the case yesterday at the Practicing Law Institute's School Law Institute. Discussions about sexual assault on campus, transgender youth in public schools, the use of police authority and arrest powers in schools, and how changing family dynamics make deciding who is the "client" in an educational matter complicated, all were extremely well-presented. So was the more expected discussion of new developments in special education case law.

One particularly interesting topic was presented by Abja Midha, Esq. of Advocates for Children of New York, where she is Director of the Immigrant Students’ Rights Project, which works to protect English Language Learners’ and immigrant students’ access to educational programs and improve their educational outcomes. The Project has numerous resources available - many in multiple languages - and is involved in policy initiatives as well.

Ms. Midha noted that not all children who are English language learners (ELL) are immigrants. Some were born here to parents who speak languages other than English. And some children who are proficient in English have parents who have limited English proficiency and require translation services to be able to access necessary information about their child and the school system.

Federal statutes and case law have created significant rights for ELL. In the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court case  Lau v. Nichols, (414 U.S. 563), brought by non-English speaking Chinese students in the San Francisco public schools, Justice William O. Douglas' opinion noted, “There is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education. Basic English skills are at the very core of what these public schools teach. Imposition of a requirement that, before a child can effective participate in the educational program, he must already have acquired those basic skills is to make a mockery of public education.”

The day's presentations on all topics will be available in a couple of weeks as an "on demand" program. The Practicing Law Institute offers scholarships to selected programs for attorneys in the nonprofit sector and others.

Masa: Empowering Families Through Education

Today we have a guest blogger, Jessica Coffrin-St. Julien, who writes about Masa, a nonprofit organization based in Bronx, New York.

Three evenings a week, in the moments before 6 PM, some 60 children and their parents rush from their homes toward busy Melrose Avenue in the South Bronx. They walk briskly, backpacks in tow, to a cafeteria located on the ground floor of Immaculate Conception Church. As students enter the utilitarian space, they know where to go and what to do: they approach their designated tables, greeted by the familiar face of their tutor. Parents make their way to a small stage, where they participate in workshops. The room is abuzz with quiet energy; children giggle with their tutors, chew on pencils, furrow their brows as they work through tough problems. Parents greet each other warmly in Spanish and lean in from their seats to hear the evening’s workshop facilitator.

This program is Masa, a Bronx-based non-profit that promotes academic achievement, civic engagement, and leadership among under-served families, with a particular focus on families of Mexican descent. As a long-time board member of Masa, I– along with my fellow board members and our wonderful, if tiny, staff – have been deeply involved in planning and implementing our programs. Founded in 2001 as an advocacy group promoting in-state tuition for undocumented students, Masa has retained its focus on education over the years, expanding and deepening our services to meet the needs of the community we serve.

As reported by the New York Times, New York City’s Mexican community has had poor educational outcomes relative to other local ethnic groups; about 41 percent of Mexican youth between ages 16 and 19 in the city have dropped out of school, while no other major immigrant group has a dropout rate higher than 20 percent. The reasons underlying this astonishing gap in academic attainment are complex, but its very existence speaks to the pressing need for programs that provide educational supports to the city’s Mexican population. In Masa’s case, this need is made all the more urgent because the vast majority of our students attend schools in local District 7. At least according to results from 2012-2013 State exams in English and Math, District 7 is the lowest-performing of the 32 districts in New York City.

All this is to say that there are real barriers to educational success for Masa’s students. However, there are also real opportunities and strengths to build upon. Masa’s families are deeply committed to academic achievement; they conceive of education as key to securing a better future for their children. They have sacrificed immensely in support of that dream, navigating an unfamiliar new city, working long hours, and diligently monitoring their children’s progress at school. Oftentimes, our families simply lack access to some of the tools or resources foundational to achieving their goals, such as access to tutors, knowledge about the complex local public education system, and English language skills. (This last issue is rendered more complex for the subset of our parents who did not have access to formal education as children, and therefore have limited literacy skills in Spanish.)

With these issues in mind, Masa has enlisted an ever-growing roster of dedicated volunteers to provide tutoring and homework help for Masa students. We work with outside organizations to provide information to parents about the complexities of school enrollment, language access, and services available for English Language Learners and students with special needs. We offer English classes for parents. And we strive to do it all while creating a welcoming community space. For our parents and children, navigating local bureaucracies can be an alienating and sometimes degrading experience. At Masa, we want families to feel safe, welcomed, and empowered.

Jessica Coffrin-St. Julien has served on Masa’s board since 2009, closely supporting program development and operations. In the past, she has worked at several out-of-school-time programs; currently, she works for an education non-profit, doing research and supporting a variety of school-level pilot projects. She feels lucky to be part of the Masa community!