‘Like a Slap in the Face’: Advocates Say Bribery Scheme Will Harm Students With Learning Disabilities

It took several months for Savannah Treviño-Casias to receive the special accommodations she said she needed to get a fair shake on the SAT. The senior at Arizona State University, who was diagnosed in middle school with a mathematics learning disorder called dyscalculia, was finally able to retake the college entrance exam, in a separate room with no distractions, and with twice as much time as other students.

But what really made the difference in the jump in her test scores, she said, from 1040 to 1550, were the six months of late-night study sessions she spent with a tutor. The testing accommodations gave her a chance, like everyone else, to demonstrate what she knew.

So when she learned this week that some students were pretending to have learning disabilities as part of their families’ elaborate schemes to cheat their way into selective colleges, she was livid.

“It was disheartening and like a slap in the face that people would fake a disability like this,” she said. “My scores were based on week after week of late nights of studying.”

The scandal, she said, “is going to make it that much harder for people to believe that anyone really needs these accommodations.”

Admission Through the ‘Side Door’

Dozens of people, including famous actors, college coaches, and a university administrator, have been charged by federal prosecutors for their alleged roles in an admissions-bribery scheme involving Yale, Stanford, and other elite institutions.

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As the fallout continues over the scandal in college-admissions, some of angriest voices are coming from advocates for people with learning disabilities and other forms of what are often called invisible disabilities. These students often struggle to be believed. Families that use fake disabilities to game the admissions system will make their lives that much harder.

“This is infuriating and disgusting, and my fear is that it’s really going to hurt the people who need help the most,” said Lindsay E. Jones, chief executive officer of the National Center for Learning Disabilities

“We work with individuals with learning disabilities and attention issues which are hidden,” she said, “and they fight stigma and discrimination every day to get accommodations on tests just to allow them to show what they know.”

The ACT and the SAT are usually administered to large groups of students on specific dates, with strict time limits. Students with certain disabilities may qualify for extended time. In that case, they would take the test alone, under the supervision of a test administrator.

Someone with a language-processing disorder, like dyslexia, needs extra time to read through questions, Jones said. Likewise, someone with attention-deficit disorder might need to take the test in a separate room to avoid distractions like pencils scratching on paper, which to someone with ADD can seem “like a freight train going through.”

The admissions bribery scandal that was detailed this week in U.S. Department of Justice filings involved a company, known as the Key, that illegally manipulated two “side doors” to help wealthy clients get their kids into elite universities. One of its strategies was to tell clients to have their children pretend to have a learning disability to get a psychiatrist to sign off on the need for special accommodations on the SAT or ACT.

At one point, a consultant reminds a client to have his daughter “be stupid” for the psychiatrist.

The students would be directed to one of two testing centers where the Key had allegedly bribed testing administrators to facilitate the cheating. Administrators at both of those sites, the Houston Test Center, in Texas, and the West Hollywood Test Center, in California have been indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of racketeering conspiracy.

The consultant would then bribe the administrators overseeing those settings to let someone take an exam in the student’s place or to provide the students answers. Parents paid as much as to $75,000 per test for these advantages. In some cases, the students involved were unaware that their parents were paying to have their tests fixed.

A Privilege That Money Can Buy

The idea that extra time on a test is a privilege that money can buy galls Rebecca Cokley, head of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. “This is part of an ongoing trend in which disability rights are seen as a privilege as opposed to remediation for historic discrimination,” she said.

“It’s going to have an impact on whether students with disabilities choose to disclose. We already deal on a daily basis with being portrayed as fakers, takers, and money makers.”

The College Board, which owns the SAT, released a statement on Tuesday saying the arrests “send a clear message that those who facilitate cheating on the SAT — regardless of their income or status — will be held accountable.”

The statement went on to say that the College Board has a “comprehensive, robust approach to combat cheating, and we work closely with law enforcement as part of those efforts. We will always take all necessary steps to ensure a level playing field for the overwhelming majority of test takers who are honest and play by the rules.”

The board relies on schools to select administrators and proctors, who are expected to ensure that testing environments are fair and follow College Board policies, the statement said. “When schools don’t comply with our policies and procedures, we reserve the right to prohibit them from administering future tests.”

The College Board did not respond to questions about how it might tighten oversight of testing to prevent further cheating.

But the prospect that it might do so worries students with learning disabilities. Already, it notes, processing a request for accommodations takes seven weeks. Students interviewed by The Chronicle said the process can take several months.

The ACT also released a statement on Tuesday, saying it was working with authorities “to identify and expose the few bad individuals who have attempted to undermine a fair testing environment.”

The group contracts with thousands of people around the country to administer its test. Those charged in the scam allegedly failed to follow ACT’s rules for ensuring a fair testing environment, the statement said.

“No student should have an unfair advantage over any other,” the ACT said. “The integrity of the ACT scores that we send to colleges and scholarship agencies is of critical importance to students and their parents.”

The group encouraged anyone with information about misconduct on the test to report via a secure hotline.

People who cheat the system hurt those who need it, said Lia Beatty, a sophomore at Whitman College who was diagnosed this year with attention-deficit disorder and dyslexia. That allows her extra time on tests and other accommodations, but when she was in high school and had to work twice as hard as her peers, she said, no one connected the dots.

Her SAT scores were so low that she went to a college that didn’t require them.

The scandal, she said, “is deeply upsetting because it undermines the accommodations that allow people like me to play on a level playing field.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.