Dylan is Using a Pencil.
Dylan’s make-up AP test is today.
The test requires him to write several college-level essays, which he’s been doing as “practice” in his AP class for two months. Dylan took a multitude of practice tests on the computer, and got 4’s and 5’s on his practice tests – which is the exact score he needs to get college credit for this class at most colleges.
But for his actual AP test, the one that matters, the one that will decide whether he has to retake the class in college, the one that decides whether or not he pays $10,000 for the class or takes it for free…
For THAT AP test, Dylan is using a pencil. Several pencils. In fact, he will be writing college-level essays with his kindergarten handwriting and awkward pencil grip because he can’t use a computer to take his test.
The College Board – the organization in charge of both the test and his accommodations – simply won’t allow it.
I had no idea that the testing isn’t done on the computer. EVERYTHING is done on the computer, in the whole world!
But for Dylan, who needs that computer more than anything, it is an “emergency” accommodation.
I called College Board two days before the test.
“You just have to wait,” they said.
“It can take up to seven weeks to approve,” they said.
“I don’t know what you can do,” they said.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” they said.
“There’s really no one else you can talk to,” they said.
Eventually, like I do after most bureaucratic phone conversations, I hung up on the College Board representative.
They expected me to say, “Oh well, I guess you guys are doing the best you can.” But I stayed on the line until I went from rational explanation to begging and crying to exploding.
The next day, Bill called College Board. He got the same answer, but he was much nicer. When Bill hung up, he believed he had done some good.
He hadn’t.
Nor had the special ed coordinator who submitted 20 pages of documentation and called them twice, or the AP test coordinator, or the high school principal who found herself involved, too.
So yesterday, I spent hours studying dysgraphia – Dylan’s ailment that makes it impossible for him to write – and re-learned remedial intervention strategies.
Then I studied his specific AP exam: What does he need to do to pass?
I found out that he could bomb the essays as long as he gets a great score on the multiple choice. I found out that he won’t be graded on handwriting. I found out about all three essays, and then later – from Dylan – I found out where his struggles have been during practice at school with the computer.
We combined all of our worldly knowledge and prepared him with shortened pencils and fidget erasers and a hair tie and gum and lots and lots of multiple choice practice.
We both woke up in the pitch black night, exhausted, stressed and incapable of sleep.
In the morning, Dylan dressed like his teacher told him to dress – in a sweatshirt and pants on an 80-degree day – and he took his vitamins and ate plenty of animal protein and got his coffee and I drove him to school.
He didn’t know the room number of the test, so we called the school during the drive.
Then I left him there after being awake all night after nightmares about a test that isn’t even mine to take.