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ACT Changes Policy to Allow Student to Retake Individual Sections of Exam

A+student+studies+for+an+upcoming+exam.

Credit to Salam Abouchleih

A student studies for an upcoming exam.

By Liy Taliaferro, North Star Reporter

The American College Testing (ACT) organization announced a new change to the ACT that will be put into place at the end of next year. In the past, students wanting to retake the ACT would have to retake the entire test.

This means if a student were to do poorly in one section of the ACT in contrast to how they performed on the other three sections, they would still have to retake four sections math, science, reading and writing – in order to improve their grade on that one section.

“From what I understand is that students are allowed to retake certain subjects,” Patty Bartell, a math teacher at FHN, said. “They can retake math or they can retake the English part of the ACT [and so on].”

Some sophomores were allowed to take the ACT in seventh grade because of their Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Test scores from that year. Some underclassmen who have taken the ACT for JBA and Missouri Scholars are planning on retaking it. With underclassmen aware of this change, some may feel more hopeful towards having to take the ACT next Sept. when the change is put into play.

“I feel like it’s a really good system because if you don’t fail the whole test you shouldn’t have to retake the whole test- there’s no purpose for it,” sophomore Kaylie O’Dell said. “It’s time. It’s a four-hour test, so if you only failed one section and you have to take the test again, that’s four hours of wasted time and if you get a worse score for a different section that doesn’t make any sense because you already got your score.”

The ACT is $68 including the written portion. Although it is not yet confirmed, some believe that having to retake individual sections is going to be significantly cheaper than having to pay $136 combining the cost of the first ACT attempt and the retake when only one section needed to be retaken. In some cases it is too great of a financial strain on some families, especially when students have to pull that money out of their own pockets. This can also be stressful for students receiving private tutoring.

“Instead of paying $60 I would hope that it would be cheaper to just take the one part,” junior Olivia Neunaber said.