Due to the Indiana state requirements on college and career readiness, the school is required to administer the ACCUPLACER diagnostic exam to low-performing students, according to Principal John Williams. The test will be administered sometime between January and March.

Assistant principal Karen McDaniel, who is in charge of the administration of this test, said students who received scores of 46 or below on the math or critical reading sections on the PSAT or did not pass the English 10 or algebra 1 End of Course Assessments (ECA) exams will have to take the ACCUPLACER. The state is not addressing the writing section of the PSAT or biology ECA.

McDaniel said, “If you get 47 or above on the (math and critical reading sections of) the PSAT, the state is considering you college and career ready.”

According to McDaniel, the test breaks down where exactly the student’s weaknesses lie in critical reading or math and also determine college and career readiness. Students will only be tested on the subject of concern, either math or critical reading, depending on which subject they did not meet the cutoff score for the PSAT and ECA exams.

“We’ll be testing students based on what their needs are and providing remediation if they need it,” McDaniel said.

The school will determine further details about the tests, once McDaniel attends training with the state at the end of this week.

Williams said that he finds the decision to make the PSAT a “high-stakes” tests after it had been administered as unfair.

“We have kids who take the PSAT as sophomores, and a lot of schools do this, but you’re trying to be proactive, so you let kids take the test as sophomores so they can get ready to take it as a junior when it means more, but you kind of get punished as a school for doing what’s right for the kids because there’s a lot of material as a sophomore that you may or may not be ready for on the PSAT.”

Student body president George Gemelas said that also disagrees with these tests, finding them to be redundant.

“You gauge the ability of students on the PSAT, to some extent, and you see what they are bad at. Giving a test to further determine this is unnecessary and probably costly too, so I don’t think it is good way to educate your students by testing them more,” Gemelas said. “I think they need to be investing more in making better teachers and better curriculum, instead of making more tests.”

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