Respectfully, the issue of unprovided testing accommodations is only relevant for kids with a disability.
This would not apply to everyone else. Only to kids with an unidentified disability. Which will be more in the underprivileged group, but it is still a minuscule group.
Especially taken in the context of elite University admissions, for which we are actually speaking of the even rarer child that is "twice exceptional'. That is, gifted with a disability.
This assumes that the rich kid rate is accurate and what’s missing is parallel accommodations for poorer kids.
But what about if instead the elevated rate is a result of fraud? In other areas of life (e.g. service animals and medical pot) it’s pretty clear that there are medical professionals out there are selling their letterhead to the highest bidder.
All the people I know who have been able to claim disability for psychiatric reasons as adults have come from upper middle class families (e.g. my bipolar aunt whose brother was the superintendent of buildings for a small cities, a friend who dropped out of grad school after not seeing his advisor for nine months whose father was a specialist manager for failing Montgomery wards stores, an ex-friend who suffered from panic disorder and agoraphobia whose father was an doctor in the army who later rose high in the ranks of the medical establishment.)
Conversely I've seen people from hardscrabble backgrounds who are obviously disabled (a friend with no diagnosis but who so thought disordered that even though she are addicted to cigarettes it would take hours for her to get it together enough to smoke her first cigarette even with help) who would struggle to deal with the paperwork to get food stamps and TAANF, never mind the much more difficult and adversarial process to get SSI or SSDI.
Why should you believe that it is "happening here"?
Let alone at a significant rate.
Why is this wild conjecture worth a discussion?
Give me a break.
As a clinician that evaluates disabilities, it is very difficult to fake one. They tend to be diagnosed at an early age, and not at "test time" in high school. In fact, as a person ages they are much less likely to receive a diagnosis. There has to be early-age evidence even if the diagnoses is later in life.
The disability rate in elite / prep schools exists but is low. These kids tend to be more on the spectrum than anything else.
Underperforming kids who don't have a disability, and might be prone to cheat by one means or another, and who aren't sports recruits tend to transfer to easier schools.
If a kid wants to go through the process of being fraudulently diagnosed by an independent psychologist with ADHD, for the purpose of accommodations, then the same process is discoverable by literally anyone with an internet connection. That is, by everyone.
And from what I know, this has much less to do with clinician corruption than it does with the individual faking symptoms. There's few to zero people risking their licenses to hand out fake diagnoses for scheduled medications that are under heavy scrutiny at all times by the States and the Feds. The liability alone is off of the charts.
Schools are only likely to accept the diagnoses if a thorough clinical evaluation is undertaken. The result of which is not able to be faked.
Why should we believe that affluent parents clinician-shop and get a diagnosis from a friendly clinician? Because of the reporting that says so, linked upthread:
What makes a psychologist an “independent psychologist“? Are they selected and paid for by someone other than the parents?
We see in medical malpractice cases that there’s always two expert witnesses and their respective testimonies always line up with the interests of the side that’s paying them. Why aren’t those clinicians worried about losing their licenses?
Edit: I upvoted your post, it was gray, I appreciate engagement especially from those that disagree with me.
There was a psychiatrist in my town who specialized in prescribing stimulants and benzodiazepines to hippies. One of his patients would get a scaled-up pill bottle the size of a small trash can full of Dexedrine every month, another got 3x a dose of Klonopin that would turn me into zombie. Frequently his "patients" would use only a portion of their medication and sell the rest for (often badly needed) income.
I almost dropped the dime on him because one of his patients was a severely disturbed friend of mine who did not have a proper diagnosis (I'd conjecture today she had schizoaffective disorder) and I think would have benefited from a change in medication -- but we never found out because she took her own life. I'm pretty sure somebody else dropped the dime on him.
This would not apply to everyone else. Only to kids with an unidentified disability. Which will be more in the underprivileged group, but it is still a minuscule group.
Especially taken in the context of elite University admissions, for which we are actually speaking of the even rarer child that is "twice exceptional'. That is, gifted with a disability.