SAT's and Autism Awareness

Really, I had thought I would post during Autism Awareness Month.  Like many (most?) parents, I have some extremely ambivalent feelings about the entire "autism awareness" thing - we don't really need more awareness, we need more acceptance, more services, more ... blah, blah, blah.


I, on the other hand, have spent much of my "discretionary" time this month trying to deal with getting my son properly set up for next month's (May's) SAT test.  For years, I had been hearing about and dreading the process of obtaining accommodations.  The College Board is tough!  They aren't giving anyone accommodations.  Hyperbole?  Of course.  But still, it is a real concern and we were nervous.  My son has some serious writing issues.  When he has to write more than a few words by hand, well ... he doesn't.  He's had writing accommodations of using a keyboard since fourth grade!  We started working on getting him accommodations for the SAT's a year ago.  The happy shock was when he was approved for the requested use of a computer (for word processing) and extended time, with no appeals necessary!  Wow!  I figured we were home free!


I was an idiot.


First, there was the "simple" matter of signing my guy up for the SAT.  Despite the wording on the online form, that seemed to suggest that one needed only the prior date when the SAT had been taken, or the prior registration number, they wanted both.  Well, he took the SAT four years ago, when he was in 7th grade, as part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program.  Oddly enough, I did not still have his admission ticket from then.  It took a mere 45 minutes worth of questions to ascertain that I wasn't making off with state secrets by establishing myself as my son's mother - who knows what the SAT scores of a 7th grader might reveal?  But that was the easy part.


The College Board is convinced that my son's tiny private school can administer the test.  His school is equally or more convinced that they cannot.  While speaking to the College Board's office of Services for Students with Disabilities, I found representative after representative (there have been numerous lengthy phone calls) who seemed to have no idea what an approved private school, a home school, a sending school, or a receiving school is.  They repeatedly assured me that if I simply contacted the named person from my boy's school, all would be fine.  What they could not comprehend was that the person they named had left the school 15-20 years before.


I tried to explain that the institutional memory of the school, which went back almost ten years, included no administration of the test, and the school could not and would not administer it, whereas my son's home school was perfectly capable of administering the test.  "What do you mean, that is his home school."  Um, no.  


Many, many hours of phone calls and emails later, I thought we had the situation resolved (after detours through apparent but inaccurate conflicts with finals), and we are back to a push-pull between which school is going to be responsible for administering the test.


And this is truly what the problem is with Autism Awareness.  People can be as aware as we want them to be about autism, but if our children/loved ones can't get the services/accommodations they need, are entitled to, have been granted - all the awareness in the world is basically useless.