LSAC settles LSAT Disability Lawsuit Forum

[cotiger]

I suspect Dredd and others in this thread imagine all law jobs to be diagraming logic games while wearing formal business wear.

The LSAT is the most important factor to getting into law school. Your school and 1L grades are the most important factors to getting your first legal job. The fact that none of those is necessarily indicative of how good you'll be at lawyering is irrelevant. It's what employers care about.

[Tanicius]

I suspect Dredd and others in this thread imagine all law jobs to be diagraming logic games while wearing formal business wear.

The LSAT is the most important factor to getting into law school. Your school and 1L grades are the most important factors to getting your first legal job. The fact that none of those is necessarily indicative of how good you'll be at lawyering is irrelevant. It's what employers care about.

Yes. And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions. The more sensible solution would be get rid of elements of the LSAT that are not reflective of a person's true potential, either as a student or professional. If you're angry at the accommodations that give disabled applicants more time because that's what they need, then you should demand LSAC dispenses with the stringent time requirements altogether. It shouldn't be the problem of applicants with disabilities that they're no longer forced to take a test that is as shitty as it used to be for them.

[papercut]

And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions.

What is that makes extra time reasonable if it turns out that these LSAT scores lose their predictive power?

You think the LSAT is a bad way to predict student performance? Well extra time LSATs are even worse.

[Tanicius]

And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions.

What is that makes extra time reasonable if it turns out that these LSAT scores lose their predictive power?

You think the LSAT is a bad way to predict student performance? Well extra time LSATs are even worse.

You guys keep saying the bolded is going to happen without even a drop of evidence to support it.

[papercut]

And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions.

What is that makes extra time reasonable if it turns out that these LSAT scores lose their predictive power?

You think the LSAT is a bad way to predict student performance? Well extra time LSATs are even worse.

You guys keep saying the bolded is going to happen without even a drop of evidence to support it.

Dude, there was a link a few pages back with research from the LSAC that demonstrated the exact thing you bolded.

I think you're a fairly intelligent poster and I'm interested in your views on this but you gotta read more of the thread.

[cotiger]

I suspect Dredd and others in this thread imagine all law jobs to be diagraming logic games while wearing formal business wear.

The LSAT is the most important factor to getting into law school. Your school and 1L grades are the most important factors to getting your first legal job. The fact that none of those is necessarily indicative of how good you'll be at lawyering is irrelevant. It's what employers care about.

Yes. And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions. The more sensible solution would be get rid of elements of the LSAT that are not reflective of a person's true potential, either as a student or professional. If you're angry at the accommodations that give disabled applicants more time because that's what they need, then you should demand LSAC dispenses with the stringent time requirements altogether. It shouldn't be the problem of applicants with disabilities that they're no longer forced to take a test that is as shitty as it used to be for them.

Dooood you're missing it.

Extra time does not make up for a disability. It is not "what they need." It goes significantly beyond that and is actually an advantage (particularly for ADHD and learning disabilities). There is empirical evidence for this published by LSAC that was linked to in this thread. To pull numbers out of the air, it's that the ADHD students who score a 167 on the LSAT with extra time on the whole perform in school like students who score a 163 without extra time. That is not a reasonable accommodation in my book.

To see accommodations that make up for a disability, take a gander at the students with accommodations that didn't include extra time. Those students who scored a 167 with accommodations performed at the same level in law school as unaccommodated who also scored 167. That's what an accommodation that levels the playing field looks like.

And I'm not angry lol. You angry?

[Tanicius]

And the solution to this problem is not to unfairly choke out applicants with disabilities that are easily and reasonably accommodated by time extensions.

What is that makes extra time reasonable if it turns out that these LSAT scores lose their predictive power?

You think the LSAT is a bad way to predict student performance? Well extra time LSATs are even worse.

You guys keep saying the bolded is going to happen without even a drop of evidence to support it.

Dude, there was a link a few pages back with research from the LSAC that demonstrated the exact thing you bolded.

I think you're a fairly intelligent poster and I'm interested in your views on this but you gotta read more of the thread.

You mean the part that says disabled applicants aren't going to mess up your 180 aspirations whatsoever?

Accommodated LSAT test takers are not administered an experimental section, so their performance has ZERO influence on the 'curve'/scoring scales/difficulty level determinations/etc. used for equating to assemble test forms and determine score scale conversion chart for each test form, so you guys can toss out that worry if a bunch of people end up gaming their way into high LSAT scores through extra time they don't legitimately deserve. Also, accommodated scores are not included in calculating the % ranking chart for scaled scores. Just because LSAC will no longer put an * on score reports doesn't mean they're going to or have to include accommodated scores in the % rank calculations, so this won't affect that either.

Or might you have meant the part where the disability time accomodation scores themselves don't have predictive ability?

They [LSAC] give particular emphasis to extra time. The report says non-time accommodations preserve predictive validity, while time accommodations remove it.

I'll grant you that one, but it doesn't worry me at all. It's not as if a disabled applicant's non-accommodated score would somehow be a better indicator. For disabled students who require time extensions, neither of their possible scores would accurately predict their law school potential. Big loss there, ruining the predictive power of a score that had no predictive power in the first place.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I suspect Dredd and others in this thread imagine all law jobs to be diagraming logic games while wearing formal business wear.

The LSAT is the most important factor to getting into law school. Your school and 1L grades are the most important factors to getting your first legal job. The fact that none of those is necessarily indicative of how good you'll be at lawyering is irrelevant. It's what employers care about.

I wasn't addressing the LSAT in the comment that led to haus' comment. I was talking specifically about Tanicius' friend who has dyslexia and gets accommodations on exams, and the idea that because she would take longer doing biglaw-specific tasks she would be a terrible lawyer.

[Onomatopoeia]

I don't see how anyone can be in favor of an accommodated score not being flagged. A better solution is giving certain people an Lsat exemption or giving them an alternate test completely

[Tanicius]

To see accommodations that make up for a disability, take a gander at the students with accommodations that didn't include extra time. Those students who scored a 167 with accommodations performed at the same level in law school as unaccommodated who also scored 167. That's what an accommodation that levels the playing field looks like.

IMO accommodations are better than no accommodations if disabled applicants a receive an advantage over non-disabled applicants that is smaller in window than the disadvantage under non-disabled students that they would have used to have.

I'll illustrate. Imagine a student with a disability. If they didn't have the disability, they would get a 50th percentile score. Because of their disability they are receiving a 40th percentile score. That's a 10-percentile gap. If, with the accommodation, they receive a 55th percentile score, then so be it. That extra 5-percentile points they are getting is less than the 10-percentile points they weren't getting before hand, so the playing field has equalized more than it was before the accommodation.

In other words, not all reasonable accommodations are perfect, and in a field as un-scientific as the LSAT, I don't why we should expect or demand that they be so.

Extra time does not make up for a disability. It is not "what they need." It goes significantly beyond that and is actually an advantage (particularly for ADHD and learning disabilities). There is empirical evidence for this published by LSAC that was linked to in this thread. To pull numbers out of the air, it's that the ADHD students who score a 167 on the LSAT with extra time on the whole perform in school like students who score a 163 without extra time. That is not a reasonable accommodation in my book.

I don't understand. Are these numbers you're pulling out the air actually examples cited as something that has happened, or are you just arbitrarily making this up? Applicant score future GPA mismatch to some extent is a well documented phenomenon in many areas of disability accommodation and affirmative action, but it doesn't invalidate the improvements that have made by itself. If the mismatch was worse before the accommodation, then we're actually looking at an improvement over the older system.

[papercut]

You mean the part that says disabled applicants aren't going to mess up your 180 aspirations whatsoever?

Accommodated LSAT test takers are not administered an experimental section, so their performance has ZERO influence on the 'curve'/scoring scales/difficulty level determinations/etc. used for equating to assemble test forms and determine score scale conversion chart for each test form, so you guys can toss out that worry if a bunch of people end up gaming their way into high LSAT scores through extra time they don't legitimately deserve. Also, accommodated scores are not included in calculating the % ranking chart for scaled scores. Just because LSAC will no longer put an * on score reports doesn't mean they're going to or have to include accommodated scores in the % rank calculations, so this won't affect that either.

Or might you have meant the part where the disability time accomodation scores themselves don't have predictive ability?

They [LSAC] give particular emphasis to extra time. The report says non-time accommodations preserve predictive validity, while time accommodations remove it.

I'll grant you that one, but it doesn't worry me at all. It's not as if a disabled applicant's non-accommodated score would somehow be a better indicator. For disabled students who require time extensions, neither of their possible scores would accurately predict their law school potential. Big loss there, ruining the predictive power of a score that had no predictive power in the first place.

It's nice that the accommodated scores don't figure into the "curve," but you'll still be competing against them in LS admissions, so you do still lose out.

They said that adding extra time "remov[ed]" predictive validity. This implies that the predictive validity is better without the extra time, so it's not like it's a choice between two similar levels of predictive validity.

[Tanicius]

I don't see how anyone can be in favor of an accommodated score not being flagged. A better solution is giving certain people an Lsat exemption or giving them an alternate test completely

People with easily accommodated disabilities don't want to be discriminated against because of labels, and non-disabled people don't want to enable institutions to commit that kind of discrimination. Far out. Why would anyone not want that.

[Onomatopoeia]

I don't see how anyone can be in favor of an accommodated score not being flagged. A better solution is giving certain people an Lsat exemption or giving them an alternate test completely

People with easily accommodated disabilities don't want to be discriminated against because of labels, and non-disabled people don't want to enable institutions to commit that kind of discrimination. Far out. Why would anyone not want that.

Should accommodated scores be included in the curve or not, in your opinion? I'm not saying your position is wrong, I'm just curious how you expect this to play out

[cotiger]

What is that makes extra time reasonable if it turns out that these LSAT scores lose their predictive power?

You think the LSAT is a bad way to predict student performance? Well extra time LSATs are even worse.

You guys keep saying the bolded is going to happen without even a drop of evidence to support it.

Dude, there was a link a few pages back with research from the LSAC that demonstrated the exact thing you bolded.

I think you're a fairly intelligent poster and I'm interested in your views on this but you gotta read more of the thread.

You mean the part that says disabled applicants aren't going to mess up your 180 aspirations whatsoever?

Accommodated LSAT test takers are not administered an experimental section, so their performance has ZERO influence on the 'curve'/scoring scales/difficulty level determinations/etc. used for equating to assemble test forms and determine score scale conversion chart for each test form, so you guys can toss out that worry if a bunch of people end up gaming their way into high LSAT scores through extra time they don't legitimately deserve. Also, accommodated scores are not included in calculating the % ranking chart for scaled scores. Just because LSAC will no longer put an * on score reports doesn't mean they're going to or have to include accommodated scores in the % rank calculations, so this won't affect that either.

Or might you have meant the part where the disability time accomodation scores themselves don't have predictive ability?

They [LSAC] give particular emphasis to extra time. The report says non-time accommodations preserve predictive validity, while time accommodations remove it.

I'll grant you that one, but it doesn't worry me at all. It's not as if a disabled applicant's non-accommodated score would somehow be a better indicator. For disabled students who require time extensions, neither of their possible scores would accurately predict their law school potential. Big loss there, ruining the predictive power of a score that had no predictive power in the first place.

Here's the link in case you were having trouble finding it (top result): https://www.google.com/search?q=Predict ... 1&ie=UTF-8

Again, you're missing the point. The problem isn't that it reduces the predictive power. The problem is that it systematically biases the estimates upward.

Again, for the perfectly fine non-time extension accommodations, predictive power is reduced. But ultimately that's not a huge problem because the scores that are produced still estimate the same performance in law school as equivalent unaccommodated scores.

[papercut]

I don't see how anyone can be in favor of an accommodated score not being flagged. A better solution is giving certain people an Lsat exemption or giving them an alternate test completely

People with easily accommodated disabilities don't want to be discriminated against because of labels, and non-disabled people don't want to enable institutions to commit that kind of discrimination. Far out. Why would anyone not want that.

Aren't law schools allowed to discriminate on differences in cognitive ability?

I, and others in this thread, have no problem with non-time accommodations. Larger type, special desks, chairs, etc are all fine, and according to the LSAC research they don't invalidate the predictive power of the test. This is not true of time accommodations.

[cotiger]

To see accommodations that make up for a disability, take a gander at the students with accommodations that didn't include extra time. Those students who scored a 167 with accommodations performed at the same level in law school as unaccommodated who also scored 167. That's what an accommodation that levels the playing field looks like.

IMO accommodations are better than no accommodations if disabled applicants a receive an advantage over non-disabled applicants that is smaller in window than the disadvantage under non-disabled students that they would have used to have.

I'll illustrate. Imagine a student with a disability. If they didn't have the disability, they would get a 50th percentile score. Because of their disability they are receiving a 40th percentile score. That's a 10-percentile gap. If, with the accommodation, they receive a 55th percentile score, then so be it. That extra 5-percentile points they are getting is less than the 10-percentile points they weren't getting before hand, so the playing field has equalized more than it was before the accommodation.

In other words, not all reasonable accommodations are perfect, and in a field as un-scientific as the LSAT, I don't why we should expect or demand that they be so.

Extra time does not make up for a disability. It is not "what they need." It goes significantly beyond that and is actually an advantage (particularly for ADHD and learning disabilities). There is empirical evidence for this published by LSAC that was linked to in this thread. To pull numbers out of the air, it's that the ADHD students who score a 167 on the LSAT with extra time on the whole perform in school like students who score a 163 without extra time. That is not a reasonable accommodation in my book.

I don't understand. Are these numbers you're pulling out the air actually examples cited as something that has happened, or are you just arbitrarily making this up? Applicant score future GPA mismatch to some extent is a well documented phenomenon in many areas of disability accommodation and affirmative action, but it doesn't invalidate the improvements that have made by itself. If the mismatch was worse before the accommodation, then we're actually looking at an improvement over the older system.

I pulled those numbers out of my ass. I just wanted to illustrate because I felt like you weren't understanding what I was saying.

You make a fair point about comparative mismatch. Unfortunately we don't have any data on that.

[Tanicius]

It's nice that the accommodated scores don't figure into the "curve," but you'll still be competing against them in LS admissions, so you do still lose out.

Fire up your engines, it's time for a tiny violin concert.

They said that adding extra time "remov[ed]" predictive validity. This implies that the predictive validity is better without the extra time, so it's not like it's a choice between two similar levels of predictive validity.

You could stretch that phrase out and read even more unsupported facts into it if you like, but I'm not following you in.

Again, you're missing the point. The problem isn't that it reduces the predictive power. The problem is that it systematically biases the estimates upward.

They were already massively biased downward. People are only complaining about it now that they're the ones who are losing the advantage over disabled applicants and now stand in a position to lose a seat, when disabled applicants have had to put up with that problem for decades.

[papercut]

They were already massively biased downward.

The data from the LSAC says otherwise, at least for extra time.

[cotiger]

Again, you're missing the point. The problem isn't that it reduces the predictive power. The problem is that it systematically biases the estimates upward.

They were already massively biased downward. People are only complaining about it now that they're the ones who are losing the advantage over disabled applicants and now stand in a position to lose a seat, when disabled applicants have had to put up with that problem for decades.

This is why I'm fine with a low bar even for timed accommodations. If someone (within reason) believes that they have a disability that causes their scores to not be representative of their true abilities, then by all means let them get extra time.

But schools should absolutely be allowed to know that the score they got tends to overestimate their ability to succeed in law school wrt other applicants of that same score.

[Tanicius]

They were already massively biased downward.

The data from the LSAC says otherwise, at least for extra time.

Nowhere that I've seen. I've seen studies limited to accommodated applicants, not applicants who have legitimate disabilities but chose not to request an accommodation for fear of being outed or discriminated against. How would LSAC even study disabled applicants who aren't outing themselves as having a disability in the first place? How can they know anyone has a disability if they aren't telling LSAC about it?

[cotiger]

They were already massively biased downward.

The data from the LSAC says otherwise, at least for extra time.

Nah, we don't have that data, and I don't know how it would be possible to collect it.

[papercut]

They were already massively biased downward.

The data from the LSAC says otherwise, at least for extra time.

Nowhere that I've seen. I've seen studies limited to accommodated applicants, not applicants who have legitimate disabilities but chose not to request an accommodation for fear of being outed or discriminated against. How would LSAC even study disabled applicants who aren't outing themselves as having a disability in the first place? How can they know anyone has a disability if they aren't telling LSAC about it?

I must have misread what they were saying in the report.

But I'm perfectly fine with the "we don't know position," because then how do you know they were "massively biased downward."

[cotiger]

They were already massively biased downward.

The data from the LSAC says otherwise, at least for extra time.

Nowhere that I've seen. I've seen studies limited to accommodated applicants, not applicants who have legitimate disabilities but chose not to request an accommodation for fear of being outed or discriminated against. How would LSAC even study disabled applicants who aren't outing themselves as having a disability in the first place? How can they know anyone has a disability if they aren't telling LSAC about it?

I must have misread what they were saying in the report.

But I'm perfectly fine with the "we don't know position," because then how do you know they were "massively biased downward."

We don't. But it's a reasonable assumption that they are at least somewhat biased downward.

I'm skeptical of the "massively" claim, though, as what I've heard of LS exams would pose many of the same problems for these students as the LSAT would.

Regardless, it wouldn't really matter so long as cotiger ruled the world and instituted low bar + flagging.

[papercut]

I'll grant that about non-time accommodations. Even time + non-time accommodations. I can imagine a blind person might need wee bit more time to take the test for lack of being able to write stuff down.

I'm just very skeptical about pure time accommodations for ADD and the like.

[Learn_Live_Hope]

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