Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration determined some of the questions they were asking on the learner’s permit test may have been too complicated and have given it a rewrite.
The MVA found that it needed more plain language in its learner’s permit tests after Lawrence Sapp of Waldorf failed the test more than 20 times. His frustrated mother, Dee Sapp, recognized that her son, who is diagnosed with autism and an intellectual disability, was being asked to process the questions differently.
“And I told them the difference is that these questions that you give them for the practice test are not the same types of questions for the actual test that’s given,” she said.
She gave an example about drinking and driving.
“When speaking about response time for someone that’s been drinking and driving, well, one of the answers is that they’re less agile, but agile is nowhere in that booklet,” she said. “So, my son wouldn’t have known what that is.”
The MVA finally allowed Lawrence to use questions straight from the practice book, and he aced it.
“The complexity of the questions often times tripped somebody up,” said Chrissy Nizer of MVA. “You start thinking about it. I’m sure if you’ve taken a test before, you kind of start analyzing the question and thinking, wait a minute, I think this is the right answer but I’m not sure.”
Transportation
Reporter Adam Tuss and the News4 team are covering you down on the roads and in transit.
After making a change with plain language, the pass rate jumped 15%, MVA said.
The MVA said it translated the plain language test to a number of other languages, including sign language.
News4 sends breaking news stories by email. Go here to sign up to get breaking news alerts in your inbox.
