Equality of Opportunity or Equality of Outcome

I have been fortunate during the first four or five years of my teaching career to not have had to deal with students claiming disability status that consequently awards them special dispensation when taking tests. I had one student about four years ago (a D- student) who apparently showed the Dean a letter from his doctor claiming that he had some disability that permitted him additional time to take his final exam. The Dean, to his credit, said to handle the situation as I saw fit. The student showed up for the final exam twenty minutes late (8:20 am. for an exam that began at 8:00) and asked if I had received the information about the additional time he required for this test. I responded, “Yes. Your additional time began at 8:00 and ended at 8:20. You now have until 10:00 to complete it just like everyone else.” Needless to say, his final grade did not improve.

But this student was the anomaly, as I have come to find out over the past two years. I have had at least one student per semester over the past four semesters claim disability status, which required they receive special treatment during test taking time. They have all received grades well above the class average.

The biggest advantage they receive is having unlimited time to complete their test. The consequence is to unfairly advantage these students relative to their peers for tests that use time as metric to measure thinking and problem solving abilities. Given enough time most people can figure out anything. What I want to measure—and subsequently recognize—is the ability to think quickly on one’s feet. Students who are permitted unlimited time to complete their tests outperform their peers, not because they are better thinkers or problem solvers, but because they are treated differently.

This is the ultimate rub: We mainstream learning disabled people so that they “don’t feel different” from their peers (whatever that entails), but then treat them differently by affording them an unfair advantage over these same peers. What about the fat kid? Shouldn’t he be allowed to run only 20 yards when competing in the 40-yard dash against his trimmer peers? And maybe he should have all day to do chin-ups and take the total number over this 12 to 24-hour period and measure it against his peers' total taken over ten minutes.  (Oh, that's right, fat kids aren't a protected special interest. Scroll down and see the Dilbert cartoon at the bottom of this link.) And doesn't the kid who works 40 hours per week to provide for his family (and buy his new car) deserve special treatment to correct for his reduced study time and sleep deprivation?

We are different and the purpose of testing is to measure these differences. As long as the process is fair then the outcome has meaning and provides information relevant to the task at hand. The sin of egalitarianism is to argue that fairness necessitates equal outcomes, which requires rigging the process to advantage one group over another. Worst still is that it creates the incentive for more students to claim disability status.

Comments

[August]

You underestimate stupidity. If people can't figure it out in the time allotted, chances are extra time won't help them at all.
I have a brother who is dyslexic, but for some reason he had to regularly get re-diagnosed if he wanted the extra time. So he just took the tests like everyone else.
For him, an oral test would likely have been more ideal than extra time.
Of course, I can just see the "normal" people in college screaming about the unfairness of oral exams.
What I noticed was the problem in college was the majority, not the minority. We've created this crazy idea that everyone should go, we've dumbed it down, and frankly most of my former classmates couldn't actually think. Maybe, if it were a bit more competitive, my degree might actually mean something.