S took this back in April, and we have been expecting the scores every week for the last 2 months. I have been given the run around by a couple of people at the school about how long this takes. Just found out from ACT that the scores have been returned to the school for a while, possibly before school was out in May. School is just waiting until fall to distribute them to students. ARGH! The administrator who seems to be able to cut through the unnecessary red tape for me is working on getting S’s score. Unfortunately they are currently being held by the administrator who I think is in charge of producing red tape. He is also the one in charge of testing, and I think since this is a new test he just didn’t want to deal with figuring out how to present it to students before school got out.
S is taking the real ACT in September, and since the point of preACT is to help him pinpoint areas to focus study on, it would be nice if the school would actually release that information. I don’t think there is a way for us to get it directly from ACT. The vast majority of our grads go to either the non-selective state flagship, or the even less selective local directional state U. For those of us with higher ambitions, I feel like it is a constant struggle. He only cares about these tests so that the students can use them to increase their score to a “passing” score for the state standardized testing date. Makes no difference if the top end gets a 26 or a 36.
Rant over.
Have him take a practice test at home under timed conditions (you can download a real one from the ACT site). In addition to giving him practice with the real thing, it will probably be faster than getting through the red tape. You will get the information you need. Good luck!
Yeah, I’ve been doing all that. Mostly I’m just frustrated that there is an actual test that the school has been sitting on for 2 months without releasing it to the few kids who actually care about it.
I’m particularly frustrated that I had to ask very pointed questions before someone would admit to me that they had them. They pretty actively put out that it could be months before scores were released. And in hindsight a couple of people I asked I’m sure knew that the scores were in, they just didn’t want me to know that they were in. I called ACT, they said 10 business days from when they get the test forms they send score reports back out to the schools. There isn’t any writing section, so it isn’t difficult to score. Only after I said that ACT told me that the school had the scores did the school actually admit that they had them but were sitting on them.
Frankly, that is dumb. What administrator would do that? I am sorry you are going through this. I find a tersely worded letter about hiring an educational attorney will work wonders. Really.
So I was pretty frustrated yesterday when I finally realized why we had never received the report. The rock star administrator that is my go to person when there is a problem got the report emailed to me last night. I really think that our school is pretty good for a large public high school. There are great offerings for AP and honors, a nice new facility, overall I’m happy with the teachers (not everyone obviously, but the overall quality is good).
But I think the place they drop the ball is on advising the top 5% of the kids. There are many little things like this that happen. Fortunately, I’m a bit obsessive and and for the most part know what is going on. So I can call my friend on the inside, who can get things fixed for my kids, even though it really isn’t her area of responsibility. But for those parents who don’t spend way too much time dealing with and worrying about these things, the issues just don’t get addressed. None of it is major, it is stuff like this testing issue. Or being allowed to sign up for an accelerated class schedule, which is important for class rank and to be able to take some AP classes as a junior and senior. And pretty much 100% of what I know about applying to elite colleges comes from research I have done on my own.
I suppose it is like this at most places outside of private schools or maybe a few public schools in a few wealthy suburbs. My general rant about education (not specific to my school) is that they focus so much on the bottom 20% that the top end falls through the cracks sometimes.