Editor’s note: The ACT has been made aware of the issues and will score the tests regardless. Students looking to retake the ACT in June may go to room 204 to collect a waiver to take it for free.

The ACT held at Topeka High on April 21 was shrouded in controversy, leaving test takers bewildered with the way in which the test was administered.
The day started like that of any other major test: groups of jittery students slowly filed into the north gym, deposited their electronics and took their seats. Continuing with regular procedure, students spent about the next half hour listening to the test’s instructions (only #2 pencils allowed, thou shalt not eat in the test room, etc.), all while absentmindedly filling out forms, identifying everything about them that a college conceivably might care about.
Soon, the test began, and all seemed to be going as planned; that is, up until Assistant Principal Rob Hayes gave a long, drawn-out speech on the intercom, informing students of the impending crackdown on tardiness. The speech—which had the energy of a scene straight out of George Orwell’s “1984”—unfortunately happened to take place halfway through the math portion of the ACT.
The test was not stopped, and students were forced to persevere through the deafening announcement.
“It made me lose my focus, and I could not recover,” junior Daijon Kent said. “The math portion was already difficult since it’s been years since I’ve done some of those things, and the ear-piercing announcement really derailed my thoughts.”
Kent’s difficulty with focusing through the announcement was a shared experience by other students. The north gym loudspeaker happens to be one of, if not the loudest in the building. Some unfortunate test-takers were even unlucky enough to have been assigned a seat directly beneath, subjecting them to a barage of noise from point-blank range.
“It was really annoying, honestly,” sophomore Ruby Ortiz said. “Not only was the announcement disorienting, but it was also piercing, to the point that my ears hurt and I ended up with a headache.”
A speech about the importance of rule-following is nothing out of the ordinary in a school setting, but the timing of the announcement was strange; why couldn’t it have waited until the afternoon, well after the end of the ACT?
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the day’s only example of puzzling management decisions.
The final portion of the test dealt with science. As the final of the four individual tests making up the ACT, the science portion is often regarded as the most stressful. Students are tasked with answering 40 questions in 40 minutes, requiring excellent time management skills and extreme focus.
Lamentably, the standard 40 minutes were not, in fact, afforded to students taking the test. You heard that right, dear reader; the science portion of the ACT—a test famous for its extensive regulations—was cut five minutes short, without any sort of warning.
On a whiteboard sitting ominously at the front of the room, “11:33” was written, indicating to students that their test would be over at that exact minute. You can imagine their surprise then, when ACT test proctor Heather Prothe suddenly walked up to the podium, leaned over the microphone, and declared the test over before the clocks had even struck 11:30.
Standard procedure involves a five-minute warning before the end of the allotted time, indicating to students that they must answer their final questions. This element of the test procedure is used by students for pacing, and thus, without it, many of them didn’t finish answering all of their questions.
“The early cutoff on the science portion really messed me up; I had paced myself perfectly to finish with about a minute left,” junior Santiago Ovalle-Asencio said. “I was expecting the five-minute warning while getting ready to answer the last questions; then she just cut it off, forcing me to leave those questions unanswered.”
Junior Owen Lathrop-Allen had a similar grievance.
“The early cutoff portion caused me to have 6 unanswered questions at the end of the test,” Lathrop-Allen said.
Considering the mistake in the timing procedure, the science scores of many students may be a misrepresentation of their true skills.
“The early cutoff for the science portion shot my score,” sophomore Benjamin Harris said. “It caught me off-guard, and I wasn’t able to answer all the questions. My science score is cooked, and that’s bad because I want to go into STEM after high school.”
With negatively impactful incidents in two out of four test portions, the question arises: what happens next for students?
“I am told that the tests will be scored,” Prothe said. “If a student wishes to take the ACT again this year, there is an opportunity to do so on a National Test Day. Students would need to register with ACT no later than May 8 for the June 13 test by registering online at act.org.”
Students who wish to retake the test can receive a waiver to cover the cost in room 204.
The ACT on April 21 was a striking reminder of the proper planning and care that must go into administering a test like the ACT. Fortunately for students affected, Topeka High is providing an opportunity to make up for their potentially misrepresentative test scores.