Westbrook High School juniors are getting a variety of rewards for taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test, ranging from pizza to a Friday off from school.
The day off, with parental permission, is just one of the incentives the school offered students to take the test this year. The school is placing such a large emphasis on the SAT in light of the state’s decision to substitute the SAT for the Maine Assessment Tests that had been traditionally taken by juniors.
In addition to the day off from school, homerooms with 100 percent attendance for the SAT will get a pizza party at a future date. Scholarships of $250, $100, $50 and $25 were awarded to four students. And the juniors who took the test will receive late arrival/early release privileges in the last quarter of the school year, a privilege normally reserved for seniors with a GPA of 85 or above.
These incentives are part of the high school’s effort to get all its juniors to take the test in keeping with a new state program, which will use the SATs as a way to gauge a school’s performance instead of the Maine Educational Assessments from now on. The program requires all juniors to take the test, with the state paying for on-line prep courses and the test fees for all the students.
So far, 173 of 200 juniors have taken the test, said Westbrook High Principal Marc Gousse. One hundred sixty-eight took the test on Saturday, April 1 and another five took it on April 3. Twenty-seven kids have not taken the test, because they couldn’t on April 1 or 3 for legitimate reasons. If they all take the test, only two students out of the junior class will not have taken it, Gousse said.
The Maine Department of Education believes using the SATs will be a better system because it’s a test the students have some interest in, said Regional Education Specialist Dan Hupp. With the MEAs, the students’ performance wasn’t reflected in their grades or their bids for acceptance to colleges. Therefore, they didn’t try very hard.
“In 6 years of using the state’s MEA at grade 11, we found kids weren’t putting in their best effort,” said Hupp. “Fitting in with the national agenda of having kids college-ready, why not use the SAT instead of making up our own MEA?”
Eleventh grader Amanda Vincent agrees. “We knew that (the MEA test) wasn’t going to impact us,” she said of the MEA she took in eighth grade. “It was like, we got to the essay part and, ‘I’m done.'”
Junior Lauren Ludka said her middle school “tried to make it serious” when she took the MEAs in eighth grade, “that was more of a joke. That wasn’t taken seriously” by the students.
Both Vincent and Ludka took the SATs on April 1 and plan to apply to colleges next year. They both said the rewards offered by Westbrook high probably influenced students who weren’t planning on taking the test.
Adam Hamilton, who also took the April 1 test, said he thought the fourth quarter senior privileges were particularly attractive and probably motivated a lot of kids.
Students in the Alternative Learning program at Westbrook, which caters to students who have difficulty keeping interested in school and performing well in the more traditional classroom settings, were also rewarded for taking the test. Their reward was an April 3 ski trip to Sunday River in Bethel. For those who didn’t want to go skiing, they’ll get a different reward later.
“These are kids that have such a big disconnect from the regular high school that when they were over at the high school they never went (to class) anyway,” said alternative learning teacher Kelly Hartman. “We had to make them feel it was big and important enough for them to come in on a Saturday.”
Alternative learning student Ryan Griffin said he wasn’t planning on taking the test but the Sunday River trip helped sway him. He said he never went to school when he was at the regular high school, but now that he’s in alternative learning he’s back on track and wants to try to go to college. He said his teachers stressed to him that the SATs are an important part of that effort.
Gousse said the awards and providing some limited transportation to the test was somewhat taxing to high school staff, but he was very pleased with the attendance. “With limited time we had to prepare for this,” he said. “Our kids did a wonderful job. They worked their butts off. They really did.”
English teacher and SAT Supervisor Margaret Hewes said Westbrook normally gets about 45 percent of its juniors to take the SAT. She believed many students were appreciative because they might not have been able to take the test otherwise because of the $41.50 fee or transportation issues.
Also, some kids may have had to work. This year, the school provided personalized letters to employers requesting pay for their absence “in recognition of their academic commitment” so they could make it.
Hupp said the state intends to announce the date of next year’s SAT at least a year in advance so schools can have more time to prepare than they did this year. He said all the schools he’s heard from so far are pleased with the attendance of their students and will all be reaching the 95 percent attendance mark. The state is planning to continue using the SATs as its assessment test for the foreseeable future, said Hupp.
Both Gousse and Assistant Superintendent Jan Breton question whether the SAT is the proper test for assessments. They both said the Northwest Evaluation Association has a test that may serve better as way to gauge school and student learning.
That test’s difficulty varies depending on a student’s performance, getting more difficult with correct answers and leveling off with incorrect answers. Hupp said the test doesn’t fall in line with the federal government’s wish for all kids to take the same test.
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