Once news broke about the college cheating scandal involving actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, somehow Kelly Ripa became the subject of speculation. Although Kelly or her husband Mark Consuelos weren't named in the scandal, some assumed she was involved because she has college-age children, too. Instead of firing back on social media, the 48-year-old Live with Kelly and Ryan host put the rumors to rest on today's episode — and shared why she took the news so personally.
As a mother of two college students (Michael and Lola attend New York University), she understands how stressful applying to college can be for both parents and students. For Kelly, the worst part of this scandal is that it takes away from kids who have actual learning disabilities, like her 16-year-old son Joaquin who has dyslexia and dysgraphia.
The one thing that really upset me about this whole thing is extra time for tests. You need a psych evaluation [for that] if you have a kid with a learning disability, which I have. A psych evaluation is exhausting for the kid and it's quite time consuming. These kids don't get extra time because they want to improve their scores by 400 or 500 points. They get extra time because they need that time just to read instructions and process what they're supposed to do. Most kids that get extra time by necessity don't want it because they feel — and they shouldn't — ashamed of it. Now, this adds this third wrinkle of 'Oh, well your parents bought you extra time.' The whole thing is a shame and it's robbing kids on the chance to achieve something on their own.
Still, she made light of the situation (it's morning TV, after all) by joking about how her daughter would have reacted to the news: "Having said that, I'm so glad this scandal broke after my kids went through this because I know my daughter would have been like, 'Hey, can you call that man?'" FYI, her answer would be no.
