All high school juniors will take the SAT as their mandatory state test, thanks to a recent decision made by the Illinois State Board of Education.
The state of Illinois has adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) as the standards we follow for both English and math. Beth Jasinski, the Instructional Coordinator for Special Education at Naperville Central, said the change is causing school administrators to shift gears.
“The change wasn’t a bad decision,” Jasinski said. “It’s just that the students were always prepared to take the ACT and now with the change, the school needs to prepare for that.”
The test was replaced because the state’s contract with ACT expired last year. It’s also required that these standards are assessed at the high school level. This assessment serves a dual purpose. It assesses the CCSS and is also a
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There are a lot of the differences between the ACT and the SAT, first of all the scoring scale. For the ACT, the scoring scale is 1-36 and the SAT scoring is 400-1600.
The SAT does not have a science section. Although according to Jasinski, there will most likely be science related questions in the math section or the reading section.
Although there are a lot of pros and cons, Jackie Thornton, the assistant principal for curriculum and instruction at Naperville Central, pointed out that she and a lot of other staff members would prefer the SAT over the ACT mostly because the SAT is closely aligned to our common core and our new standards.
“I am happy that the state will continue to provide a college entrance exam to all juniors, but I was disappointed that the PARCC assessments will no longer be given at the high school level,” Thornton said. “One of the downsides of PARCC was that it was a time-intensive assessment. We will be able to accomplish required state testing in less time this year since we’ll only be giving the