Can teacher refuse to give additional time to finish the test?

[fred44]

The purpose of a test is to see how well a person knows the material. Any standard test, including IQ tests, are timed. The goal is to answer a certain amount of questions within a certain amount of time. You can not ignore time as a factor in taking tests.

If a student has a disability and has an IEP, extended time is usually granted, but there is a limit, usually 50% more time.

In general, if any kid can't do what the rest of the world can do, disability or not, that kid needs to figure out a way to step it up. There are no IEP's in the real world. And the world craps on the weak. Make your children stronger, don't make excuses for them. Again, the world craps on the weak.

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by fred44

The purpose of a test is to see how well a person knows the material. Any standard test, including IQ tests, are timed. The goal is to answer a certain amount of questions within a certain amount of time. You can not ignore time as a factor in taking tests.

.

That is simply not true. In fact, one test very commonly used to test for giftedness (Stanford-Binet 5) purposely does not have any hard and fast time limits on the subtests used to get the overall score because it is felt that fast does not equal "smart." On the other commonly used "IQ" tests, time is only a factor on a few of the subtests, but not all.

[oldtrader]

Originally Posted by DS81

My son is in 7th grade (Pre Algebra 2). In previous years he was an A student, and he really liked math. Now he gets F's and D's because he fails every single math test. The problem is timing. He completes 50% of the test correctly, but he has no time to finish the rest. He does his homework really well; he barely makes any mistakes, but he takes his time; he does not like to rush. Also, he scored high (Algebra level) on the MAP test (this test is not timed). He understands math problems and he knows how to solve them. He just can't solve them quickly. I tried practice with him more so that he can speed up. It did not work. He gets too nervous, and he starts to make silly mistakes. I asked his teacher if she could give him an extra time. She refused. I don't know what to do anymore. Does anyone have any suggestions? Can teacher refuse to give additional time to complete the test? Can I legally demand an additional time?

Tests are designed to take a certain amount of time to complete, and every student must be allowed the same amount of time to take the test. Otherwise it would be impossible to judge a student's abilities.

Giving your son additional time, would not be fair to the class as a whole.

Your son has to learn how to speed up taking his tests, not just poke along.

If they allowed your son an extra 4 hours, he may have a perfect paper, but when comparing him to the other students, it would put him best student in the class, knocking out the ones that earned the right to be there.

When grading on a curve, the tests have to be taken under the same conditions, in the same amount of time to make it fair to all the other students. Everyone is working on an equal basis.

It is like in the workplace. All but one person can build a product in 1 hour. One will take 3 hours to do the same thing. The employer cannot afford to hire some one, and spend 3 times the amount of money for this person to build one of the products. This person will have to be fired.

Same for your son, if he wants good grades, he has to learn to speed up and work at a normal rate of speed just as the others are working with the same pressure. Learning to work at the same pace as the other students, will be the most important lesson he can learn in preparing him for the future work place.

[marid4061]

Also keep in mind if a child does not finish a test and is allowed time after school to finish, then they have an unfair advantage of having seen the entire test. I teach high school special ed and we go through the same thing with extended time on assessments. Most students get 1/2 half the extra time to take a test. So generally our tests may be estimated for the average student to take 1 hour to finish and those who need extra time have the whole class time (90 minutes). This way the have to do the test in one sitting and not have the unfair advantage of walking away from the test and looking up answers. And yes, in the past that has happened many times. If a child has a disability and even extended time does not help then sometimes they have an accommodation for reduced work to show mastery. Like many others have stated, if it is taking so long for him he just may not be ready for the workload. And there is nothing wrong with that. He will enjoy the math much more when he is able to work at it at a comfortable pace.