The Cleveland Metropolitan School District, one of the poorest in the country, had a 504 rate of less than 1 percent, though a fifth of the district’s students had disabilities with needs that were generally too severe to be covered solely by 504 accommodations, said Jessica Baldwin, the district’s executive director of intervention services.
“The impact of poverty can’t be understated here,” Ms. Baldwin said.
Federal disability data does not include private schools. But in some areas, like Manhattan and the West Side of Los Angeles, private school students are even more likely than affluent public school students to use disability diagnoses to qualify for extended testing time, according to research and interviews with school workers.
Some private schools help smooth the process. One mother in Montgomery County, Md., said that when she transferred her son, who has A.D.H.D. and a reading disability, from a public high school to a private one that charges $45,000 per year in tuition, the staff at the new school told her about ACT accommodations she had not known about. Her son scored a 33 after taking the exam over multiple days, and is now considering applying to Ivy League schools.
In communities where these accommodations have become commonplace, public and private school officials often declined to speak about them in detail, or said they were simply following federal law.
In Mercer Island, Wash., Craig Degginger, a school district spokesman, said officials were concerned about the system’s high 504 rate, and were working to bring it in line with regional and national averages. “We strive to appropriately identify students who truly need supports,” he said in an email.
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Ms. Pelzer, the California high school counselor, had more than two decades of experience in her profession before retiring this year. The share of students with 504 plans in her district, Capistrano Unified, in Orange County, has tripled since the 2013-14 school year, accounting for about 1,000 more students, according to district data.
Ms. Pelzer said that determining whether a child is disabled or simply struggling with academic and social pressure is “not as objective as it appears.”
