Wed. 21, freshman, sophomores, and juniors took the ACT Aspire Summative Assessments, but not all students took the test. Sophomore Rebecca Lemaire was not in her testing room Wednesday morning because she opted out.

Her reason “My mom doesn’t like standardized testing besides the big ones [tests] like the SAT, and she [Mom] just emailed the assistant principal to opt me out,” said Lemaire. “I personally want to opt out, I feel that it’s usually not needed except for the big ones, [tests]” said Lemaire.

Teachers and other staff member encourage students to take the test because it practices test taking skills. According to discoveractaspire.org, Aspire helps student identify key skills they haven’t mastered yet.  “No I don’t because I do so well on tests usually, and not taking a few standardized test won’t affect anything because of all the other tests during classes,” said Lemaire.

Sophomore David Rusakow was a student that was unaware he could opt out of Aspire. He wouldn’t even try it though, “Probably not because it’s for yourself not for the school and it only benefits you, it’s only three hours,” said Rusakow. “Yea, everyone should take it because they still get half the day off even if they come.”

Rusakow believe test are beneficial because its just practice “I don’t think it’s [standardized testing] as big of a deal as people make it out to be, I think it’s fine and it should be important in college admissions,” said Rusakow.

A week ago Wed. 14, students took PSAT “I thought the PSAT was better for me than this test.” [On] this test I don’t think it gave me many skills because it was much harder on the computer.” said Rusakow.

Should students be allowed to opt out of  ACT Aspire and should all test be presented on paper and pencil?