Newmark’s Door links to the following story by Samuel Abrams about scores on College Board exams where disabled students get extra time. Apparently, if you can convincingly demonstrate that you need “special accomodation,” you can get extra time on the SAT. Abrams writes,

When the College Board announced, in the summer of 2002, that it would stop “flagging” the test scores of students who were given special accommodations for the SAT, the gold standard exam for college admission, disability advocates were thrilled. . . . For years the College Board had placed a mark alongside the test scores of students who were given special accommodations. That could mean Braille for the blind or appropriate tools for the physically disabled, but for the most part the special arrangement meant more, even unlimited, time to take the test. . . .

Surprisingly, now that detailed 2004 SAT results have become available, it appears that growth in special accommodations is not the real problem. As Figure 1 shows, dropping the flag did not accelerate the already steep climb in the numbers of test-takers given special accommodation—it appears to have reversed it. What happened?

Abrams continues with an interesting story, based on data in the District of Columbia and the U.S. as a whole, suggesting that more students than before are “gaming the system” and claiming disability just to get the extra time. (He has some excellent graphs; take a look.)

The Educational Testing Service has done studies to estimate the increase in score that a student might expect if he or she were given extra time on the exam. So some calibration is possible, if they wanted to go that route. (That is, for everyone who took the timed exam, they could give an estimated “unlimited time” score and thus make everyone comparable, without having to flag timed and untimed exams.) My colleague who used to work at ETS said he suggested this idea once but it was a non-starter.