Dozens of students at Texas high school may be required to retake the anxiety-inducing SAT after a UPS truck lost and destroyed the standardised tests as they were being transported for evaluation.
At least 50 students from El Paso High School who sat for the test widely used for college admissions in the US on 27 October were informed that all their efforts that went into studying for that exam will likely have to be repeated after the documents were damaged and, in some cases, lost entirely in transit.
“El Paso ISD is working closely with the College Board to determine a remedy for the El Paso High School students whose SAT exams were lost in transit after they were securely submitted to UPS,” the El Paso Independent School District said in a statement to USA Today.
The students who were impacted by the incident, EPISD added, would still be able to sit for the ACT, which is a similar standardised test to the SAT and the school would be offering it at no additional cost on 10 December.
Understandably, students were furious when they learned of this mishap and quickly began pointing out the holes in the offers that were currently on the table from the school district and the College Board, which administers the SAT and other standardised tests across the country.
Senior Ezra Ponzio told KFOX TV that one of the immediate repercussions of the tampered tests was that he was no longer going to be able to apply for early admission to college, an issue that other students who had similar plans would likely also face since most programs require test scores in well before the December deadlines.
“I was mostly looking at [Texas] A&M so the early deadline is already shot,” he said in an interview with the local news station. “Hopefully, the SAT score can come in time for the actual deadline in January, but here’s hoping.”
Another point of contention with some of the students was that the test that’s being offered by the school district at a no-cost rate, the ACT, is not the test they’d studied for and would therefore not be an accurate representation of the test – the SAT – that has since been lost on the side of the road.
“Either apply for the ACT, which is a test that we don’t know anything about, or pay again for the SAT and take it in December,” explained Mr Ponzio, noting that the financial strain on retaking the SAT – even if it’s later – would be a lot for students.
The College Board did not immediately respond to The Independent’s requests for comment but told USA Today that though test materials getting lost in transit is “rare”, there is recourse.
“When this occurs, we work with the school to ensure that students are able to retest as soon as possible,” the College Board wrote in a statement to USA TODAY on Monday. “We are currently working with El Paso High School to provide options for the impacted students.”
Each year, more than a million students from high schools across the country will sit for the SAT at least once. Based on recent statistics from the College Board, those figures have shot up in recent years, with 1.7m students taking the standardised exam in 2022, compared to 1.5m in the year before.
The College Board credits this increased test-taking with the introduction of the SAT School Day, which is an in-school program that provides schools, districts, and states a way to offer the exam to juniors and seniors in school, on a weekday, oftentimes at no additional cost to students.
While students wait to hear back about what the exact accommodations will be made for them in lieu of this incident, the company responsible for transporting the exams has offered their condolences in the matter.
“Our employees are working to recover as many tests as possible, and we will work with the school to resolve the situation,” said UPS in a statement to CNN. “The driver’s actions in this case are not representative of UPS protocols and methods, and we are addressing this with him.”
“Safely meeting our service commitments is UPS’s first priority,” the company added.
