On Monday, July 11, the Illinois State Board of Education announced that the PARCC test would no longer be taken by high school students. It was also announced that the ACT will officially be replaced by the SAT. Back in the summer of 2015, a law was put into effect that required a college entrance exam to be placed in the state’s testing cycle.
The state of Illinois signed a contract with the College Board declaring that the SAT will replace the ACT in the testing cycle for the 2016-2017 school year. With this, a redesigned version of the SAT launched in March 2016. The main changes between the old SAT and the new are the scoring scale and the elimination of a penalty for guessing. The old SAT’s scale was 600 to 2400, while the new version has a scale of 400 to 1600.
College and career counselor Daniel Gin has high hopes for the switch.
“Change is always difficult, but I think the switch is nice. The SAT has redesigned their exam to be more comprehensive. This is a growing year,” Gin said.
However, not everyone is happy with the switch. Some juniors are unhappy that they will be forced to take the SAT this upcoming year.
“I feel frustrated because I feel that all of the preparing my peers and I have done is useless,” junior Daniella Rodriguez said. “It’s a little stressful to think that we may not be prepared enough to take the SAT.”
Juniors will still have an opportunity to take the ACT, just not through the school. However, it is mandatory to take the SAT when it is offered at Niles West in April.
Besides the change with the ACT and SAT, the PARCC test is now only offered to grades 3 through 8, and not at the high school level.
Some faculty members said that they are happy with the decision to drop the PARCC test from the high schools.
“In theory, the PARCC test was a good idea, but here at the high school we’re not going to miss it. It takes up a lot of time and resources as well as taking away from valuable instruction time,” principal Dr. Jason Ness said.
Some students are thrilled with the prospect of not needing to take the PARCC test.
“I don’t like taking them because they don’t help students at all,” freshman Ella Rose Winston said. “Normally, they have nothing to do with what we learn in any of our classes, and it’s just a waste of time. It is not beneficial for students, and it’s kind of frustrating that we have to take a week out of our school year to take them.”
Students can prepare themselves for the SAT using Khan Academy test preparation resources, which can be found on Career Cruising, or by taking prep classes offered at school starting in February.
For more information on the switches in standardized testing, plan on attending the informational meeting for parents, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 8 at 5:00 p.m.
