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It is not just parents who want — or need — the diagnoses for their children. Schools do too, and it’s an indictment of a broken system.
Ask yourself this: if you had a chance to get your child extra exam time for their SATs, would you do it?
The answer for many might be yes — even if the cost was $10,000 for a neuropsychological assessment that could diagnose them with learning challenges like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Because maybe you’re legitimately concerned.
Maybe your child is plagued by anxiety or problems concentrating — made worse by pervasive social media or microsecond TikTok clips that destroy focus.
And maybe ensuring even the tiniest bit of breathing room for them, at whatever cost, is worth it for getting that better grade.
So on the one hand I wasn’t surprised by the surge in high school students getting extra time on their SATs — with triple the number now receiving accommodations.
Nearly 7% of students, to be exact, across multiple exam boards received additional time or separate accommodations, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s cheating,” dermatologist, podcaster and parent Ardash Vijay Mudgil, told the outlet, noting that his daughter had told him at least 60 of her peers at school had received extra time in their exams.
But to accuse parents of gaming the system is to fundamentally misunderstand what is going on.
It is not just parents who want — or need — the diagnoses for their children. Public schools do too. And the reasons why are a damning indictment of a bureaucracy-laden, broken system — that funds the pen pushers but less so the schools.
I speak as someone who has had a little bit of experience with this sticky and thorny issue — and know people who have stalled when the neuropsychological testing suggested for their children came in at at prohibitive five figures.
For many, the cost won’t be a hindrance.
And from speaking to others I know who have been down this road, here is what happens next.
You have your assessment. You talk with your provider. They will produce a report for you — which may end up furnishing you with an educationally-linked diagnosis. That report may end up being sent to the Department Of Education.
For many, there will be huge relief that deeply challenging issues have been given a name.
For others, after $10,000 or thereabouts being spent, you might not want to walk away with just a “you’re fine”.
From there, if whatever diagnosis your child has been given is accepted by the DOE, it is highly likely they will be given an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) — and will need to be part of an integrated co-teaching class (ICT), that has at least two teachers for the number of students. There will be huge benefits to this.
How is this funded? Once your child has an IEP, the school in question will get more money from the DOE — of which there is currently $291 million in allocated funding via the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
With that money they will be able to hire paraprofessionals, or school psychologists, and provide additional services like Occupational Therapy.
As a result the kids with IEPs often start to do much better, with more personalized attention.
But here’s where the benefits extend beyond just the students with IEPs. Other children in the same classes — supported by paraprofessionals — will profit from having a smaller student to teacher ratio.
Schools themselves will benefit from having greater learning services unlocked.
Why do they need this extra injection of money? Many schools flag that classrooms remain wildly underfunded, despite the staggering $43 billion New York City schools budget — torched today by Jeff Bezos — and $44,000 average amount spent annually on students.
While the money unlocked from IEPs has to go directly to the students who qualify, as the IDE act itself states “IDEA funds can be combined with other sources to fund allowable expenses.”
For underfunded schools, this money could contribute to a lifeline.
Unsurprisingly, acquaintances have told me that if left solely to the DOE to do the assessments, which are completely free, your child is much less likely to get given a diagnosis or accommodation. Because the consequences are costly.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise if parents — guilt-ridden about the one thing they worry about most, and perhaps even encouraged by teachers — are willing to spend large sums on an assessment, to then unlock the money the school needs to support their children.
I don’t blame the schools, or the teachers. They’re mired in a system that too often prioritizes bureaucracy over classrooms.
They watch, as we do, the DOE waste billions of dollars on rent, spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on chromebooks (that teachers have come to hate), or even over $350,000 on iPads to monitor bathroom breaks.
I blame the system — set up so that the only way schools can potentially get some of the funding they need is through the IEP system.
In the meantime, for many of those students, the advantages of the accommodations that accompany their diagnoses’ — that have risen nationally more than 300% over the past 20 years — will follow them all the way through middle school, to high school, and of course those SATs.
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