Обсуждение

To my past, current, and future law students: please know that your accommodations are not a "large advantage." They're a need. Legal education is broken in so many stupid ways. But what we are not going to do is normalize this kind of thinking. Let's go over why. 🧵

Orin Kerr

Here's Professor Sag's discussion about accommodations that precedes the earlier screenshot. Of course, if students believe that Professor Sag is wrong about that, that's super useful, too, I'd be very interested to hear about that.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

First, unless you're doubling as a law professor and *that specific student's* psychiatrist, you don't get to have a say on this. This isn't an academic freedom thing, and I could not care less about your pedagogical goals.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

Next. It's great if you can empathize with your students because you also have [insert condition like ADHD]. But your experience with ADHD doesn't invalidate nor speak to anyone else's experience with it. Maybe 50% more time feels like an overcorrection FOR YOU. Consider yourself lucky.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

ADHD, like any other psychological condition, manifests differently for different people. The same student can experience "mild" ADHD symptoms until an event (like high stress exams) triggers an episode that can be intensely debilitating.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

Some students have panic disorders. Do you know what it's like to have studied hard, worked your ass off all semester, for your brain to just shut down when it counts? Some students need that extra hour just to settle their mind enough to read the first question.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

Being diagnosed with a condition that requires accommodations is also not "having the right paperwork." I work with many students who "have the right paperwork" who wish every fucking day that they didn't.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

In my two years of teaching, I have cried with my students who have begged to "just be normal" like their peers. I have learned different grounding techniques, I've walked students back from ledges, I've seen full blown episodes of psychosis.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

I've seen brilliant minds with enormous potential overcome with immense feelings of inadequacy. And I've seen those students quit because some professor or some other student made them feel like the practice of law is not available to them.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 04:25

Do you know how many late night conversations I've had to have about what happens if our school gets shot up during exams? Is that something you have to navigate every single time you sit down to do something important?

Michael S. Kirkpatrick

28 июл., 15:46

And comments about “paperwork” gloss over the fact that just getting an evaluation and diagnosis is a huge barrier for many. It’s not like you just walk into an office and fill out a form like a parking application.

Michael Coley

28 июл., 05:42

As someone who had accommodations as a student, went on to teach high school students with accommodations, and now works in a Higher Ed job that interacts with the office that decides those accommodations, this text infuriates me. Thank you for speaking up & being an actually good human being.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 05:53

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING YOU'RE DOING. Your job is hard enough and immensely important. ❤️

Jenny C

28 июл., 06:53

Thanks for writing this. My son is sitting for the exam tomorrow without accommodations which he really needs. It saddens me that he has worked so hard and may run out of time or become overwhelmed by the stress of the situation. My heart goes out to all test takers, prayers up for their success. 🙏

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 06:56

Oh my goodness. Good luck to your son! I'm coaching several students and it breaks my heart the toll this exam takes on them. I'm rooting for him!! And yes, the bar accommodations process is AWFUL. It's why I'm so baffled by folks suggesting they are easy to get and "handed out." Keep me posted!

rahaeli

28 июл., 17:29

Please tell him if he doesn't pass that it's not that he failed the test, it's that the test failed him

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 05:58

“But I also know that if I had been given 50 percent more time than my fellow students in an open-book exam, that would have over- corrected.“ This is so solipsistic and patently inappropriate as a way of thinking about accommodations for people who are not you that my jaw actually dropped.

Ellie Margolis

28 июл., 15:38

In my experience, a shocking number of legal academics are entirely unable to see anything outside of their own perspective and how something affects them personally.

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 06:04

I can’t imagine casually suggesting that absolutely everyone receiving those accommodations is receiving an unfair advantage based on an n of 1 that consists in specifically my retrospective reflections on what would have been unfair as to me.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 06:08

I can't thank you enough for saying something. Partially because I feel like I'm going crazy and partially because I know I'm going after some big time academics as an untenured prof myself. I actually cannot believe what I read.

J. Stephen Clark 🏳️‍🌈

28 июл., 13:52

Creating a Wikipedia entry for himself doesn’t make him a big-time academic. He’s no specialist in civil rights, including ADA. He’s opining outside his expertise. He has such a peeve against extra time accommodations that he can’t even get through an AI blog post without digressing into it.

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 06:12

It’s not just that part, either.

dubyal

28 июл., 08:49

Iow: let s ignore the obvious, corrosive problem..

J. Stephen Clark 🏳️‍🌈

28 июл., 13:54

From white grievance to male grievance to straight grievance to abled grievance. Privileged grievance is all the rage!

J. Stephen Clark 🏳️‍🌈

28 июл., 13:39

How, by the way, does he know what percentage of his class receives extra time? We don’t share that information with professors. Is he proctoring his own exams and scrutinizing which students are receiving extra time?

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 06:33

Matt mentions his dyslexia and ADHD in the post, which I think is important context. Time accomodations are highly imperfect (frequently ignoring severity differences) and often based on crude guesses. So, while I'm very pro-accommodation, there is a worry about relative advantages beyond need. 1/

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 07:30

I know he mentioned it. I mentioned that in my thread. ADHD manifests differently in different people. Saying you have it so you think it's an overcorrection generally is not how this works.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 07:30

That aside. It is irresponsible for law professors with large platforms to use language like "luxury" or "large advantages" to generally describe accommodations. It's stigmatizing. It ensures students who need help stay silent.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 07:30

There are more responsible ways to have this discussion. This was not it. And it is important for us as academics to recognize that and call it out.

J. Stephen Clark 🏳️‍🌈

28 июл., 13:29

Clarence Thomas mentions his Blackness, and it’s not “important context” when he’s gutting civil rights.

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 06:33

So, I think the best solution is strong accommodations combined with test design that is more time insensitive. This also can help with some of the LLM concerns. 2/2

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 07:45

(fwiw I'm being sharp in my replies because I'm genuinely shocked by how many folks think like this BUT I do agree with this point and appreciate you advocating it because yes, you are right).

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 07:33

Or, the LLM concerns are entirely overblown. I have had zero issues with AI use in my classroom across all levels of students. I do extensive research on AI and I write better exams to keep up with the times. It's a lot of work. Oh well. I suggest other academics do the work to figure it out. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 08:21

I agree that profs should test for themselves. I think there are massive differences in LLM success across different subjects and test formats. For my Criminal Law exam, the LLMs are hopeless. But, for Crim Pro, they are getting very close to being viable. 1/

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 08:21

I think that's because all of the cases are from SCOTUS and there is a lot written about them. I can still tell the answers were written by an LLM (because of the types of mistakes made), but my last experiment generated answers that were in range of the lowest grade in the class. 2/2

Jake Knanishu

28 июл., 06:37

I mean, the best solution would be no tests, right? 😁

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 19:44

I think that one should not cast aspersions on countless students’ accommodations based on imperfect recollection of one’s personal experience and I don’t really care to discuss anything else proposed by someone who does so

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 19:51

I share Jess’s shock and outrage that this part of the post is just passed over and we’re supposed to consider everything else in isolation from breathtakingly callous and ill-informed treatment of accommodations, which would be bad in itself even if didn’t play a central role in the argument.

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:56

I appreciate this elaboration and understand better what you are saying. I initially read his anecdote as just showing the gauging problem in time allocations: severity varies and the severity of his condition wouldn't have supported that level of accomodation. 1/

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:56

But I see your reading of it better now. And I understand your objection to it. I still think it is important to engage Matt on this subject (as @jmiers230.bsky.social has effectively done) despite your reading because the problems with administrative implementation are important.

Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof

28 июл., 09:51

everyone can read the post, Corey. The relevant portion is screenshotted. Not good enough, for the reasons that Jess articulated.

J. Stephen Clark 🏳️‍🌈

28 июл., 13:33

I just took two flights yesterday without anybody having an “abled grievance” tantrum over those people “luxuriating” in wheelchairs “unfairly” getting to board first.

rahaeli

28 июл., 17:32

I absolutely *guarantee* you people throw fits about that, too, unfortunately. Here's one of my friends dismantling the sarcastic "Jetway Jesus" meme: theupfront.media/disabled-pas...

Disabled passengers, airport wheelchairs and the pernicious myth of “Jetway Jesus”Clickbait hacks aside, perpetuating inaccuracies about disabled passengers and wheelchair users is wrong — and counterproductive for aviationtheupfront.media

rahaeli

28 июл., 17:35

In general, people are just very bad at accommodating disability! A lot of the loudest of them *are* the type of person who would lie about being disabled for personal advantage and think everyone else would too, but just in general, we're *so* bad at the concept of "equitable, not equal".

Jessie J

28 июл., 17:44

These people should try it at O’Hare. Let’s have them put a boot on their leg and drop the several doors from the wheelchair pickup zone. They can walk all the way to that zone , wait for a hour with 50 other people for no wheelchairs to come and no extra wheelchairs available for a friend to push.

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:49

Perhaps because I know Matt and knew about his struggles with dyslexia before reading his post, I might be reading it more (too?) charitably. Even though I agree wholeheartedly with @jmiers230.bsky.social , I didn't read Matt as being that far apart from her view. 1/

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:49

I read Matt as saying in good faith that accommodations absolutely should be a civil right. But he is concerned that the process for determining the length of a time accommodation is unreliable. I think that's reasonable. Matt thinks they might be giving too much time to too.many students. 2/

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:49

I don't agree with that based on what we know. I think it is more likely that administrators, in the aggregate, are both under and over allocating time because they fail to address differing severity and determining need is something many are not properly trained to do. 3/

Corey Rayburn Yung

28 июл., 20:49

As I said, I might be reading Matt differently, but I saw his objections as based on the current imperfect process of determining the amount of time accommodations and not advocating the denial of the very important need to accommodate. 4/

Peter Orlowicz

28 июл., 06:21

Seconded.

Peter Orlowicz

28 июл., 06:23

At this point I think I can imagine @katmacfarlane.bsky.social 's weary Cassandra-like exasperated sigh.

Peter Orlowicz

28 июл., 06:34

it's almost as if she anticipated this very kind of argument and already wrote a response to it. Hopefully it'll be back up on SSRN soon.

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 06:35

Thank you for this. Following and reading immediately.

Peter Orlowicz

28 июл., 19:37

Fixed now.

Debating AccommodationsThe reasonable accommodations provided to postsecondary students with disabilities are the subject of significant debate, both in the popular press and in acadepapers.ssrn.com

Peter Orlowicz

28 июл., 06:25

(Is it normal for professors to know who gets accommodations on their exams? I actually don't know. @jamesftierney.bsky.social ?)

Jess Miers 🦝🦞

28 июл., 06:31

It is at my school so I can know how to best assist those students. I don't know about other schools.

Alan Mygatt-Tauber

28 июл., 06:41

At my school, it’s up to students to tell professors. But I give a week-long take home that can be completed in a few hours, so it’s never been a problem.

Project Azar

28 июл., 06:52

Adjacent to this, I think my favorite law school exam (is that a thing?) was an all day take home exam. The thing was 8 questions long, you had 9 hours to do it, and it covered basically the entire FRCP. Didn't feel rushed or anxious. Just slow, steady work. So I think you're doing it right.

Joe Dunman

28 июл., 16:10

At my school, we are not told by staff or admin, but many students self-disclose (usually after the fact) or their absence from the main testing room is inadvertently noticed.

James Fallows Tierney

28 июл., 16:03

I typically would not be informed about exam accommodations but would be about students who need in class accommodations