Without warning: Illinois switches from ACT to SAT

After the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) decided to have the SAT be the statewide college entrance exam in place of the ACT, some students became frustrated.

In 2016, the ISBE provided 11th graders attending public high schools, including public charter schools, with a free ACT; however, the Board transitioned to the SAT beginning in the spring of 2017, giving students less than a year to prepare.

“It wasn’t a smooth transition because the state didn’t have funding for an entrance exam, and then the [ISBE] decided late [on which test would be provided for the following year],” Zachery Gimm, director of secondary curriculum, said. “A lot of the prep that was built into classes already [for 2017] was geared towards ACT style questions on a quiz. A student in [the class of 2018] is probably not as happy about [this transition] because [they] didn’t have two years of preparation to do well on it, but, I’m guessing, two years from now students won’t know [the difference]. They’d be upset if they went back to the ACT.”

One student from the class of 2018 who was a junior during this switch, Jessi Stevens, senior, agrees that the change was unfair to her class — especially due to the new scoring system.

“I feel like it’s unfair just because the SAT has a new scoring system,” Stevens said. “I feel like it’s a lot different than the ACT in the way that it’s scored, and there are different portions of the test [compared to the ACT] that make it [challenging].”

After these revisions to the SAT, however, Gimm disagrees with Stevens and says that now “the questions aren’t too different, and that the revisions made to the SAT helped make it more similar to the ACT.” He also adds that that the test will still be giving students the same opportunities for success and no schools will fall behind because of this change.

“I think, if Lake Zurich is a high performance school then it’s going to continue to be because the problems that schools will have are going to be similar across the board,” Gimm said. “Whether you’re talking about Stevenson or Wauconda or Lake Zurich, no one is going to jump the other one because the performance will be about the same.”

Although Gimm believes that schools will perform the same, he also knows that the two tests differ. He says it is easier for students to get a group of questions correct on the ACT by just knowing a few tricks , but not on the SAT — thus, making the SAT harder for some students.

“I think the ACT is more open to tips and tricks. The SAT [is] a little less so, that could keep scores down. If you learn two or three tricks, then you might be able to get four or more questions right on the ACT. Maybe not on the SAT,” Gimm said. “From a student perspective, I think the main difference would be the ACT has four sections [and] the SAT has two sections. I think that if a student is particularly strong in science, it may have a slight negative impact. SATs claim to have subscores for history and science, but if you look at the questions you use to measure those, [it’s a stretch].”

Stevens herself has experience with both tests, and feels the difference. She plans on submitting her ACT scores and believes that currently others are also submitting their ACT scores more than their SAT score because they were more prepared to take the ACT and therefore did better.

“I feel that it kind of changes our chances of being able to apply to certain schools just because some people are better at the ACT versus the SAT, so I feel like it’s important for us all to get the same type of testing. A lot of the classes that are taken for preparatory reasons are for the ACT. SATs are really new to people.”

Though many students like Stevens feel frustrated with this switch, Gimm believes that the ISBE made this decision for good reasons.  

“They made the shift because of two reasons. One, it was less expensive by millions of dollars, and, secondly, the ACT revised their suite of assessments. When ACT switched, [their prep test] became not as useful [while] the SAT has the PSAT 8/9 and the PSAT, which is predictive of success [and] the score on the SAT,” Gimm said. “Not only was it less expensive, but it accomplished the things we wanted to accomplish.”