this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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There's a kernel of truth in here, which is that there's an increasing number of (mostly white, mostly rich) kids getting "diagnosed" as "disabled" because their parents are willing and able to pay to shop around for an expensive doctor to say that they have ADHD and thus need double-time on all assessments. This is at least sometimes pretty transparently just a way for some wealthy families to buy their way into unfair advantages for their kids so they can "beat" their peers.
The right response to this is not to make it harder to get a disability diagnosis, though. Instead, we should be trying to design classes and assessments that don't require these kinds of accommodations in the first place because they're built from the ground up with accessibility and equity in mind. That would require us to actually structurally rethink education, though, which we are pretty unwilling to do.
Hot take: If double time on assessments is even slightly helpful for you, you should have it. Most people don’t find it helpful, because most people finish exams with time left over. There is no faking the need for more time.
I'm just really not a fan of timed assessments in general. I don't think putting most people in a position where they're forced to fight the clock to come up with answers yields a good measure of their understanding or ability of most things. I've always been much more inclined to give things as take-home assignments (essays, exams, etc.) with a few days to ruminate on things. Unfortunately, the emergence of LLMs has made this a challenge as well.
I agree that anyone who needs added time on an assessment should have it. However, if your assessment is designed such that almost everyone needs more time, you have a bad assessment. There's a lot of that out there, though, which then both penalizes people who didn't jump through the hoops to get extra time and unfairly advantages folks who don't generally need added time but got it anyway to have a cushion. I have seen many, many students who absolutely will take every second they're allotted on an in-class assessment even though they definitely don't need it (this is true even for lots of students who don't have accommodations).
when we had our little "test-taking strategy" lessons one of the things they told us is that second-guessing yourself is usually wrong if you're not confident, so I always just blasted through that shit (unless it was computational and we had to work out actual math) and never understood what other people were doing with their time. especially the other former gifted children who had better handwriting and could mechanically fill in the circles faster.
It was never helpful for me, but I had to pretend I needed it to get any other accommodations.
Same!
Being uncharitable to myself, this basically describes me. Back in the day my parents paid a few thousand bucks to send me to a neuropsych in my final year of college because I was struggling hard. I was gunning for that adderall scrip - had copped a couple from friends and they made me seem like the superhuman scholar of my dreams (the first hit is quite something!). Then the neuropsych came back with a report that was like "surprise actually you are autist" and I was like wtf. These days of course I could have had a 20 minute zoom call with a pill mill and got my amphetamines. I didn't get my drugs but it did give me extensions on some assignments, even extending a couple months past the end of the formal school year. Sometimes I still have nightmares that there are assignments I have yet to complete before they'll give me my degree. Anyway without that advantage I definitely would have just failed out.