Disability Identification and Educational Accommodations: Lessons From the 2019 Admissions Scandal

Abstract

A recent, widely publicized scandal involved students who obtained fraudulent diagnoses of learning disabilities in an effort to get accommodations on college admissions tests. Although the exact circumstances of the scandal are unusual, the methods used to obtain diagnoses and accommodations illustrate widespread problems with current policies. These problems include certain disability identification methods that overemphasize performance on diagnostic tests, a lack of attention to the unfair advantages that unwarranted accommodations can provide, and a lack of commonly used guidelines for making accommodations decisions based on credible, objective data. The scandal was a rare consequence of these problems, but far more frequent consequences involve unequal treatment of students from different backgrounds and test scores that fail to reflect actual student skill levels.