How would you handle this?
This is kind of a delicate situation. I posted here a month ago about DS1’s college search. He very much wants to be a mechanical engineer. He is dyslexic and dysgraphia with slow processing speed. He also struggles
with and is medicated for depression. He gets mostly A’s in school (I haven’t seen his latest GPA but it’s above 3.6 I’m sure). Since last summer he’s been preparing for the ACT test, and getting extra tutoring for it. He took the practice ACT last summer and I think his score was 28 or 29. His tutor felt that with accomodations for his learning disabilities he could do much better. So we had him retested and I requested accomodations for ACT. They approved them. He registered for and received emails saying confirming his registration, what to bring the time, etc. He appeared at the testing center on February 6th and was promptly told that they couldn’t give him his accommodations. When he asked why they referred him to the superintendent. He asked to be directed to the superintendent who looked up his registration somehow and said that yes, he was approved for the accomodations but they were not prepared to give those to him and he was also registered as an 8th grader. Ds1 is in 11th grade!! He took the test anyway and came home home annoyed.
I complained to ACT and asked for some explanation. Apparently someone massively screwed up because they said they’d have to escalate the complaint. Fortunately a week alter they emailed saying they were refunding our fee and he was re-registered for the April test with accomodations. I figured since they refunded our money that they would scrap the test he took in February. No- I just got an email with his scores. They are very low. The composite score was 23. I don’t think he got the email because i registered him for the test and so I think the scores only came to me. I’m not sure he saw the scores.
Should I tell him? I normally share everything with him but he already struggles with depression. The scores on the next test should come up because he will be more relaxed, he’ll have his accomodations and he won’t be preoccupied with the situation. But I still think I shouldn’t tell him. He’s taken 2 college tours recently to colleges within driving distance and he really, really likes the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He even said,
”These are my people, mom.” He will have to raise his ACT score up back to 28 to get in there.
Thoughts?
" I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." Mahatma Gandhi
"This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems." Martin Luther King, Jr.