The Colorado Academic Standards announced on December 23, 2015, that the academic assessment of Colorado, the ACT, was going to be omitted and replaced with the SAT. The revised format of the ACT was implemented to change to the SAT in the spring of 2016 for the student class of 2017. Now the switch is currently scheduled to be taking place in the 2017 spring semester instead.

Since 2001, the ACT has been Colorado’s statewide assessment for all juniors. Regardless of the jarring timing, the Colorado Board of Education thought it would be a great idea to refine the ACT to the SAT as the state’s college readiness assessment. Many have spent long strands of time along with much money spent on ACT prep classes. Meaning to some people, they would have been wasting precious time and money on a test they thought they would be taking.

Kaley Cooper, 11, is a student at Lewis-Palmer High School. Cooper has been studying for the ACT since she was in the eighth grade. She has also been taking time out of her life to study throughout the years of high school up until now.

“The scores would go down because not a lot of students enjoy a sudden change in something they have been working hard on for a long time,” said Cooper.

Only a small handful of students in high school actually pursue in taking the SAT on their own. The small handful only consists of around sixteen percent of every public high school in Colorado that take their prefered test, the SAT, as their college readiness evaluation. Along with the compact percentage of the students who take the SAT, ninety eight percent had taken the ACT this year.

With the junior class of 2017, they will be among the last class to be required to take the ACT as their state assessment. This leaves the sophomore class and the upcoming students, with the new format and material of the SAT.

Tristin Crane, 10, will be apart of the junior class of the 2016-2017 school year. Crane will be among the first class to be taking the SAT since 2001.

“I think it will be a different and weird switch because we have all studies for the ACT since middle school. We have all been doing ACT prep and now this happened,” said Crane.

The sophomore class and the classes below to as low as the seventh grade, who have been preparing for the upcoming and expected evaluation test, the ACT, will now be forced to start over and be required to study the all new format and information for the SAT.

“We were all getting prepared for something we don’t even need to use,” Crane said.

Lewis-Palmers student body, have been preparing themselves for the ACT since freshman year and have spent numerous times studying or taking practice ACT test within school. Many students were taking optional out of school classes in which required even more work, all for a test that was almost not even going to be implemented for the junior class in 2016 spring.

This sudden announcement the day after christmas break had begun, had left students struggling and holding on by a thread as to what they should do next to prepare for this new test, all with only three and a half months away from the date of the ACT. The test was moved back a year to spring of 2017, many juniors at Lewis-Palmer were thankful to receive the new that they would be taking the ACT in the spring. This will be the final year of ACT being the statewide college readiness assessment.