East Mtn. High School Offers ACT Testing for All Juniors
Posted April 12, 2010
Change can come slowly in education, but East Mountain High School is at least a year ahead of all other public schools in New Mexico in implementing a new law [6.19.7.9 NMAC - N, 1/30/09] that all high school juniors take a college-placement or career-readiness assessment. On Saturday, April 10th, all East Mountain High School juniors will take the ACT free of charge at the school, thanks to the financial support of the East Mountain High School Foundation.
Due to state-wide budget cuts in education, the New Mexico Department of Education delayed the requirement that schools implement college-placement assessments like the ACT for all juniors to the 2010 – 2011 school year or beyond. EMHS Principal Doug Wine explained why the school went ahead with the testing, despite the lack of state funding. “We realized that ACT testing is too important to wait to implement. Our goal is to prepare each student for college. With the information supplied by the ACT, students, their families and their teachers have accurate information about whether or not each student is ready to tackle college-level work.” Unlike tests created to measure learning of New Mexico’s specific learning standards, doing well on the ACT has been correlated with doing well in college.
According to EMHS teacher Bradd Schulke, students realize the value of taking the ACT. “We’ve been using old ACT test questions in class as a way to assess student learning,” he said. “Our students got into this right away because they understood why getting ready for college is important. Some of the questions we thought would be the easiest for students to answer actually turned out to be the hardest.”
East Mountain High School Foundation President Cheryl Atkins explained why the Foundation stepped in to fund the project. “When Doug came to us with this idea, we immediately saw why it was so important and how it could impact students. Our job as fundraisers for the school is to support our college-preparatory mission. Funding a proposal for all juniors to take the ACT was obvious and we are so excited to be the first public school we know of taking this step.”