You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The ACT canceled scores of tests Saturday when the high schools or colleges all over the country that were going to be the sites of the testing declined to open. Those cancellations are terribly annoying to students who'd signed up to take the test, but ACT usually tells them about the closures in advance and refunds their testing fees or arranges for a later testing date. ACT told people that this was the case Saturday.
Those frustrations don't compare for someone who stood outside a testing center, in winter weather, for a test that did not take place. That happened Feb. 6, when about 100 students showed up at a high school in the Bronx for an ACT they believed would be given that day. In Missouri, several dozen students who were signed up to take the test at Fontbonne University faced a similar experience, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Adam Weyhaupt, the Fontbonne vice president of academic affairs, was contacted to meet with the students.
In both cases, students asked how something like this could happen.
The father of one student told The New York Post that officials at the Bronx high school had no idea there was supposed to be a test given.
“These high school kids were trying to do the right thing to get in college,” the father said. "For the test maker to pull the rug out from under them is unacceptable.”
A mother told the Post, "I have been on the phone for one and a half hours trying to reach someone. A hundred kids are outside the Bronx testing site and no administrator has shown up."
A spokeswomen for the ACT said via email, "Our test center operations team is investigating this situation with test center administrators, and exploring options to provide displaced students with a make-up test later this month. We are sorry for this inconvenience to students and will contact each student with an update when we have more information to share."
