By Edwin Garcia Sanchez,
Staff Writer.
With another school year looming, a thought in the minds of students is the infamous Scholastic Aptitude Test, better known as the SAT. The SAT is organized by the College Board, a non-profit organization that is responsible for both the SAT and the Advanced Placement program. Students study for the SAT hoping that, with a good score, prestigious schools will be eager to admit them.
However, one of the persistent issues around the SAT doesn’t have to do with the content or difficulty of the test. A significant challenge that students face is finding somewhere to take the test. Spots are limited and testing sites are sparse, which makes people wonder why it’s not readily available to students.
In Sonoma County, there is only one testing site, our own Santa Rosa High School. Tracy Batchelder, who works at our College and Career Center, personally sought to reestablish SRHS as a testing site for high school students. “It’s a very tough thing to coordinate. People have to get paid, trained and convinced. It’s very labor intensive,” said Batchelder.
The leg-work and the cost of organizing a school into a testing site, although a great service towards students, discourages many other schools from attempting to become a testing site. In the case of SRHS, the work was rewarded as the College Board approved the school as a testing site, but there were a few hiccups that made it difficult for the local school population to enroll.
“There was no heads-up,” said Batchelder. When the College Board approved SRHS, they emailed Batchelder without a warning beforehand so that students could be ready to go onto the College Board’s website and sign up. Of those 76 seats available when sign-ups were opened, only three students who signed up actually attend Santa Rosa High.
Now, why weren’t the students that go to the school where the test is taking place get a fairer chance to get in? “There’s no mechanism to only allow local students to take it,” explained Batchelder. This free-for-all system of signing up for the SAT is another reason why schools don’t want to become SAT sites. If they can’t even guarantee that a fair portion of those taking it will be from their school, let alone county, why bother trying to do it at all?
