"Next round in LSAT disability fight"

Last year, I blogged twice about an agreement between the Law School Admissions Council and the Department of Justice regarding accommodated LSAT test-takers. In the future, LSAC agrees to stop "flagging" accommodated takers and to ensure additional opportunities for accommodated test-taking. Among other things, I noted:

LSAC wants to provide scores highly predictive of first-year law school grades. On that, it does a very good job--it is the best predictor of first-year grades; it is an even better predictor when combined (with an appropriate formula) with an undergraduate GPA. But the settlement means that LSAC must now provide both these scores, and scores that are less predictive (i.e., accommodated scores, which are not as predictive of first-year law school grades), without any indication to law schools about whether this score fits into one category or into another.

Now comes this piece by Karen Sloan in the National Law Journal. Details of the agreement have yielded disputes, including, unsurprisingly, this:

A spokeswoman declined to detail the council's objections, but issued a written statement citing potential damage to the test's ability to accurately predict who will succeed in law school. "We want to reiterate that we deeply respect the rights of disabled test-takers, but we cannot ignore the impact that certain of the recommendations would have on the overall integrity and fairness of the LSAT accommodation process," the council said.

There's much more to the story from several perspectives. But this crucial issue was, of course, entirely foreseeable.