The Fayette Citizen-News Page

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Miscommunication postponed Saturday's SAT

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizenNews.com

One would think that getting out of a test on a Saturday would be a good thing, but it wasn’t. Close to 80 students from around the Southern Crescent headed to Fayette County High School last Saturday morning to take the SAT. They were turned away.

Rumors floated around as to the reasons the test was cancelled, but according to ETS, the Educational Testing Service, it was simply a case of miscommunication between ETS and the person who would be administering the test.

According to Tom Ewing, the media relations person for ETS, originally there was not supposed to be a test scheduled for Saturday. ETS then realized that there was to be a test but this message did not reach the local person who would run the test. Ewing expressed apologies to the students on behalf of ETS and said he realized that it was a great inconvenience.

It is a little more than an inconvenience though. Many of the students who were planning on taking the SAT last week needed the test to get early admissions into college as well as for scholarship applications. Dr. Charles Warr, principal of Fayette County High School, is working with ETS to establish a retest before the Nov. 1 deadline that most schools require for early admissions. As it stands, the next test will be Nov. 8 and, according to Melinda Berry Dreisbach, public information specialist for the Fayette County Board of Education, ETS will count the test as if it were taken in November. This will help students applying for scholarships but will not help students trying to get early admissions.

If, and when, a retest date is announced for October, The Citizen will publish it both in the paper and on the web site, www.thecitizennews.com.


What do you think of this story?
Click here to send a message to the editor.