New Guidance on Testing Accommodations

Standardized exams -- SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, and others -- are  "gateways to educational and employment opportunities" and the entities that offer these tests are to required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to offer these exams in a manner accessible to persons with disabilities.

The ADA came into being in 1990 and was amended in 2008 in an effort by Congress to overturn the impact of several judicial decisions that narrowed its intended scope. New Regulations implementing the revised ADA were adopted in 2010.

Despite the revised regulations, there has continued to be resistance on the part of testing agencies, especially the Law School Admissions Council, which oversees the LSAT, to  extending accommodations to students with disabilities. Even where there has been no pattern of resistance to offering accommodations, confusion about what should be offered and to whom has raised questions for schools, testing agencies, and students.

 The Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has noted that they continue "to receive questions and complaints relating to excessive and burdensome documentation demands, failures to provide needed testing accommodations, and failures to respond to requests for testing accommodations in a timely manner."

In response to these questions and complaints, the Department of Justice has just released new guidelines for testing accommodations.  Among the highlights of this document are the following:

• A person with a history of academic success may still be a person with a disability who is entitled to testing accommodations under the ADA
• Any documentation if required by a testing entity in support of a request for testing accommodations must be reasonable and limited to the need for the requested testing accommodations
• Proof of past testing accommodations in similar test settings is generally sufficient to support a request for the same testing accommodations for a current standardized exam or other high-stakes test
• An absence of previous formal testing accommodations does not preclude a candidate from receiving testing accommodations
• Testing entities should defer to documentation from a qualified professional who has made an individualized assessment of the candidate that supports the need for the requested testing accommodations. A testing entity should generally accept such documentation and provide the recommended testing accommodation without further inquiry

Every student who anticipates taking a standardized test, every educator and administrator who works with such students, and every testing service that administers such tests should take the time to carefully review these guidelines. They are clear, concise, and very specific about what they do -- and do not -- require. 

The New MCAT: What Future Doctors Need to Know

Medical training is filled with rites of passage. To become a physician, one must dissect cadavers, sit through endless lectures, and often incur substantial loans during medical school. Even after graduating, newly minted doctors need to survive on little sleep and money for years during residency. But the first challenge comes before medical school even begins: the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT. And that rigorous test is about to get even more difficult. 

Observing that an older and more diverse population brings new challenges to the practice of medicine, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) has rolled out some major changes to the MCAT; they hope the new test's results will allow medical schools to better determine which candidates are ready to learn to be effective doctors in today's world. The revised test will be administered for the first time in April of 2015, affecting those who hope to begin medical school in fall of 2016.

Changes to the Test

More Topics: In addition to content knowledge and critical thinking, areas tested by the old MCAT, the new one will feature questions about research design and graphical analysis/data interpretation. The lion's share of points will come from the verbal section and questions about biology, psychology, and biochemistry. Students should also be prepared to answer questions about organic chemistry, physics, and sociology, though there will be fewer of these. The AAMC says that the test will also draw clearer connections between scientific knowledge and its application to medicine.

More Time: The new test will take twice as long as the old MCAT. Standard administration will last a grueling 7.5 hours, including breaks. According to the AAMC, while there are more questions on the new MCAT, there will also be more time to answer each question.

More Prerequisites: Eight prerequisite courses prepared test-takers for the old MCAT. The new test covers more topics, and so the number of prerequisite courses jumps to eleven. Since course content varies by college, students should check to see how their school's science offerings line up with the AAMC's preparation recommendations.

New Scoring: Instead of being scored on a 1-45 scale, test takers can earn a maximum of 528 points on the new MCAT. Between 118 and 132 points are possible in each of the four sections.

General Study Tips

The new MCAT covers more material, meaning that cramming over the course of a few months is even less likely to be effective. The best way to study for cumulative exams like the MCAT is to take advantage of opportunities to learn throughout one's undergraduate career, even if the MCAT is still years away. College students should avoid last-minute study sessions to get through their midterms and finals in their science courses; taking the time to learn concepts deeply and thoroughly, through many shorter study sessions spread evenly over the semester, will result in more durable knowledge. Later, as they study for the MCAT, crammers will likely find themselves scrambling to relearn everything they forgot immediately after taking their college exams, even if their scores at the time were satisfactory. Hastily acquired knowledge does not last.

Would-be medical students should take as many practice MCATs as they can, as well. For more information on the benefits of practice tests versus traditional studying, see our previous post on current research about testing and memory.

Implications for Students with Disabilities

Certain types of reading difficulties, attention troubles, and sequencing issues will make the new MCAT even more challenging for some students. Students interested in medical school should compare their time and effort levels to those of their peers.College students who find it difficult to master the content of the science courses needed for medical school may want to explore whether they have subtle difficulties with some aspect of learning, such as an undiagnosed reading disorder or a problem with attention. An evaluation, such as those we provide here at the Yellin Center, may clarify these questions and will yield helpful strategies that students can use to improve their mastery of the course material. Even high performers may want to consider seeking out an assessment if they're putting in tremendous effort and unreasonably long hours. Those students who learn that they have weak pacing skills, for example,  may want to consider consulting an executive function coach to help them figure out how to get through each of the sections

Students with disabilities may benefit from accommodations, and the sooner such measures are in place, the better; examination boards are more likely to turn down requests for accommodations if the student cannot demonstrate a history of having such provisions in place. A high school student may be able to finish enough questions on a tough chemistry exam to earn a solid grade, but a particularly slow pace or waning attention is likely to impact her more as she enters college and medical school. 

Picmonic Uses Mnemonics to Make Science Memorable

Science, especially at the higher levels, can be especially challenging for students to learn. There’s much terminology to recall, and concepts are often so abstract that many learners struggle to keep up. Enter Picmonic (picture + mnemonic), an insightful and creative way to make seemingly arbitrary information truly memorable.

Picmonic uses an audiovisual method for teaching science. Although there is material for K-8th grader students, Picmonic specializes in medical content, making it a fantastic resource for students preparing for the MCAT or actually enrolled in medical school courses. Here’s how it works: Each concept is represented by a detailed, cartoonish picture depicting all of the important aspects. The relationship between the picture and the concept is tough to discern at first, but audio narration takes students through the different parts of the picture, explaining how each part of the image connects with real scientific concepts.

For instance, an 8th-grade-level card with a typically wacky tableau teaches about Charles Darwin and how he developed the theory of natural selection. The 80-second narration begins on the left, where a dolphin balances a cherry on its nose. “Cherry dolphin, Charles Darwin,” explains the narration. Atop the cherry is a British flag, to cue the memory that Charles Darwin was English. Next to the dolphin is an island, shaped like a golden goose. (“Golden goose, Galapagos.”) A bearded man is sitting cross legged with a book called Natural Selection on his lap. He isn’t wearing any clothes; this “natural outfit,” explains the narration, is to remind the learner that he was a naturalist. Perched in a tree above Darwin are three gray birds with thick, green beaks and a bag labeled “nuts.” On nearby islands are similar gray birds, except that the birds on one island have thin beaks that they’re using to drink from flowers and others on a separate island have pointed beaks they’re using to eat worms. A large, green monster has red plumage and a hapless bird foot protruding from its mouth, reminding learners that brightly colored birds were not adapted to the Galapagos because they were too easily spotted by predators.

All of this is explained in less than a minute and a half, and the images are so strange and memorable that it would be difficult to forget either the terminology or the concepts illustrated.

Students can select either “Classic” or “Creative” audio to explain the image to them. The creative audio sometimes takes the form of a jingle or rap and sometimes that of a narrative story with a plot. We recommend listening to both, though the creative audio seems to work best after the classic has already established the basic facts.

One aspect of the Picmonic we really like is the rating scale that appears at the bottom of each card. Once a student has learned the material, he can quantify his grasp of the concepts on a scale of one through five by indicating whether he “doesn’t know it” (1), “gets it” (5) and anywhere in between. The card will then go into a “pile” of cards with the same rating so students will know what they need to review and what they don’t.

Interested? You can try Picmonic for free to get a sense of whether this style of learning is right for you or your student. All of Picmonic’s content is available for either a monthly subscription fee or a one-time fee.

Photo credit: Flickr:  Ano Lobb

Changes in Medical Education

Two recent articles in The New York Times focus on how medical education is changing. Both reflect the trend away from the traditional path of four years of hard science courses in college, followed by four years of medical school, where coursework continues to focus strictly on science based topics.

One move away from this is the growth in post-baccalaureate pre-med programs, where college graduates who have not taken the necessary science courses, or who are out in the working world but want to switch to a career in medicine, can prepare for medical school. According to the Times article, more than 15% of new medical students have gained admission after completing such programs and there are now 135 post-baccalaureate programs listed with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). These students may have studied poetry, history, or psychology in college and may have had work experience as teachers, artists, or marketers. They can bring a very different perspective to their medical education and their interactions with their patients.

Another trend involves changes to the medical school curriculum itself, towards what the Times piece calls "heart and soul and social science." The AAMC is making substantial changes to the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in an effort to look for strengths in areas other than just science, with the goal of admitting individuals to medical school who bring a broader skill set -- including the ability to connect to their patients, not just to analyze test results. Beginning in 2015, the MCAT will include sections on "Psychological, Social and Biological Foundations of Behavior" which are designed, according to the MCAT website, to recognize "the importance of socio-cultural and behavioral determinants of health and health outcomes." In addition, another new section called "Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills" is intended to help identify applicants from diverse backgrounds. Students entering college this coming fall will be the first group to take the new MCAT when it is put in place in 2015.

Dr. Yellin's work as a consultant to the Office of Student Affairs at New York University School of Medicine and his extensive experience performing evaluations of medical students lead him to observe that whatever changes may occur to medical school admissions and curriculum, the academic demands of medical school will continue to be an issue for future physicians."Like other strong learners," he notes, "medical students will not get very far in their studies or careers without an understanding of how they actually learn and without developing a repertoire of strategies. Often, learning strategies that have worked for them in other environments don't work for them in the demanding setting of medical school. They need to develop new strategies for the extraordinary demands of the medical curriculum and that requires them to understand how they learn, since even very successful students will have stronger and weaker areas in their academic skills."

Photo: Alex Proimos/Flickr Creative Commons