From the [UK] Times:

British exam regulators report a 43 percent increase in the number of students who were given extra time or extra help to complete standardized tests, sparking allegations of affluent parents exploiting the system to benefit their children.

A number of experts agreed yesterday that the rules were open to abuse. Tom Burkard, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and director of the Promethean Trust, a charity for dyslexic children, said that many middle-class parents were exploiting the system to gain an unfair advantage for their children.

“Schools are under great pressure not to give students extra time in exams. When they do, it’s usually the result of pressure from middle-class parents,” he said.

Sports teams get kids with disabilities onto the ice

By Michael Winerip in the New York Times:

An unsentimental look at a day in the life of Brian Collins and his son Danny at an American Special Hockey Association game in Hicksville, NY. Danny,13, has Down syndrome and plays for the Long Island Blues. The association now has 50 teams, and many of the players have Down syndrome, autism, ADD, Tourette’s syndrome, Asperger’s and cerebral palsy.

“We look like no other hockey you’ve ever seen,” said Jon Schwartz, who is the national association vice president and coach of the New Jersey Daredevils.

Danny loves playing offensive hockey. He also loves routine, French fries, Coke, pepperoni, “High School Musical” (the CD) and “The Night Before Christmas” (the book).

(more…)

From the Los Angeles Times:

At a time when major league baseball players are taking ADD medications in record numbers, LA Clippers center Chris Kaman offers an opposing view. He says he found out recently that he was misdiagnosed with ADD as a child, and wishes he hadn’t spent years taking Ritalin and Adderall.

Kaman says he actually had an anxiety disorder, and is now using neurofeedback to reinforce calm thoughts. He hopes to become a spokesman for children who are misdiagnosed or are looking for another alternative instead of taking medication for hyperactivity.

From the Associated Press, New York Times, USA Today and elsewhere:

A congressional committee investigating doping in baseball was told yesterday that ADD and ADHD have increased sharply among major league players — whose diagnoses make them eligible to use otherwise banned amphetamines.

The number of major leaguers claiming therapeutic use exemptions for adult ADD has mushroomed to 103 this past season from 28 in 2006, the year that the stimulants were banned.

Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) charged that players are using ADD claims to evade the amphetamine ban and use use stimulants like Ritalin and Adderal. He said the players are using these drugs at a rate that is eight times that of the general population.

“This demands an explanation. There’s something fundamentally wrong them going from 28 to 103,” said Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the committee that determines the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned-substances list. “If we had this percentage increase in the general population, it would be on the evening news as a national epidemic. It’s an outrageous number.”

From the New York Times, BBC:

The drugs most widely used to manage aggressive outbursts in intellectually disabled people are no more effective than dummy pills for most patients and may be less so, researchers are reporting.

The finding, being published Friday in the journal Lancet, sharply challenges standard medical practice in mental health clinics and nursing homes in the United States and around the world.

(more…)

Maybe ADD explains dad’s behavior

From the New York Times:

AS more youngsters than ever receive diagnoses of disorders – the number has tripled since the early 1990s, to more than six million – many parents have come to recognize that their own behavior is symptomatic of those disorders, sometimes in a major, but more commonly, in a minor way. In effect, the diagnosis may spread from the child to other family members, forcing each to confront family frustrations and idiosyncrasies that they might prefer to have left unacknowledged.

… diagnosing an adult through his or her child has its risks, psychiatrists say. (more…)

From the Denver Post, a feature on College Living Experience. The for-profit program is helping 47 Denver area students with autism and attention deficit learn how to go to college. See earlier stories about this program’s operations in Chicago and the Washington, D.C. area. All told, the company claims to serve some 7,800 students in 16 states.