LEXI WEINGARDT On Jan. 1, Wendy Strait, head of the Mountain Vista Counseling Team, sent an email to all sophomore and junior students and their parents announcing that Colorado was switching from the ACT to the new SAT test.
In the email, Strait acknowledged the fact that, at recent meetings about the ACT and college, counselors have suggested that students not take the SAT because of how it is going to change in 2016. Also, at the moment, all Colorado colleges require that students take the ACT, so the SAT seemed unnecessary.
“I always thought that colleges wanted the ACT and that the SAT was only necessary if you wanted to go out of state. I feel like it puts a lot of stress on students that is not needed,” junior Austin Sack said.
Strait also promised that the counseling department would “do everything in our power to look for a way to prepare students for this test.”
“We didn’t get much of a warning [that we were switching to the ACT],” Sack said. “I know a lot of students like to get books that they can work on and that we offer many classes for ACT prep and I don’t know if [students] will have time to prepare for the new SAT so that they feel ready to take the test.”
Luckily, many superintendents and educators were just as surprised by, and opposed to students taking the new SAT in spring as the students were. In fact, Interim Education Commissioner Elliott Asp sent an email yesterday evening to school district superintendents telling them that the department is “working with the two testing providers on a plan that would keep the ACT status quo for one more year.”
Asp agreed that requiring juniors to take the SAT this spring would be unfair “with college entrance, placement, and scholarships on the line.”
‘“To require this year’s 11th graders to take the SAT exam this spring – after they have already invested time, money and energy in preparing to take a different assessment – would not be in their best interest,”’ Asp said in the story. “ACT may get one more year as Colorado’s mandatory 11th grade test” on Chalkbeat Colorado.
