Clerical error forces Rosewood High students to retake ACT test
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on March 16, 2017 8:48 AM
A clerical error made while submitting American College Testing results at Rosewood High School in early March will cause more than 40 students to have to retake the test next week, according to Wayne County Public Schools.
The students, from two Rosewood homeroom classes, originally took the test Feb. 28. By the following week, the ACT organization had notified WCPS officials that the tests would not be accepted.
"ACT puts out specific guidelines on how things are to be handled, and in two cases that documentation was incorrect," said David Lewis, WCPS assistant superintendent for accountability/information technology services. "We believe through our investigation that the way the test was administered was correct, and it was an error with how the tests were submitted to ACT that caused the problem."
Nothing done by students taking the test or the teachers giving the test had anything to do with the retests being ordered, Lewis said.
"Nobody tried to change any answers, there was no cheating. This was purely a clerical error," he said.
Lewis said that the individual test coordinators for the tests are typically responsible for making sure tests are submitted correctly.
The district first learned that tests might be rejected on March 9, and got final confirmation the next day. Lewis said the district then had to go about ordering new materials for the retests, and drafting a letter to parents explaining the situation.
That letter went out on Tuesday, and it marked March 21 -- a week later -- as the retest date. While the original tests will not be scored, and will therefore have no impact on student's final scores, students may not have as much time to prepare for the retest as they did for their original test.
Lewis said that March 21 is a statewide retest date designated by the ACT organization.
Rosewood was the only school in the district to have such an issue, which Lewis said was the first of its kind he had seen in the three years he has worked with ACT. North Carolina began requiring high school students to take the ACT in the 2012-2013 school year.
While some students across the country must pay to take the ACT, N.C. provides the test to students for free. Lewis said that the ACT organization will not charge the district for the mishandled tests.
"As far as I'm aware, that will just be a write-off for them," he said. "That definitely makes things easier for us."