WEST ORANGE, NJ — At the April 16 West Orange Board of Education meeting, West Orange High School students and parents protested the implementation of a mandatory SAT prep class, with a group of current freshman asking the BOE to reverse its decision to make the class mandatory.
The course, which was approved at the Dec. 18 meeting, is equivalent to 68 hours of SAT prep work and will replace the optional SAT Boot Camp that the school currently offers. Students have the option to take the mandatory SAT prep class during 10th or 11th grade, though some at the meeting said they were told by guidance counselors that they had to be in the class during their sophomore year.
Jacob Klausner, who is currently a freshman at WOHS, said that taking the SAT class is not allowing students to take other courses they want to take over the course of their high school careers.
“These students, including myself, already have to take a mandatory elective in order to fit the guidelines of (WOHS), so what this course is doing is forcing some students to have to drop their art or music classes,” he said at the meeting. “Some students are planning to take AP statistics or Java or other full-year courses, which they can no longer do.”
Klausner also said that he was surprised to learn that the SAT class is offered to students in both 10th and 11th grade, because many students were being told during the scheduling process that they had to take it during their sophomore year, without the option to take it as a junior.
“I was surprised to see that kids could take it junior year, but as we soon learned, the guidance counselors are not allowing us to take it (as a junior),” Klausner said. “Whether that is from the administration or just from their own judgment, we’re not sure.”
Klausner was not the only WOHS freshman to speak at the meeting. Paulina Acosta said that many students plan their schedules out over the course of the four years they are at the school, and the SAT class has forced them to change those plans.
“Our plan for the next four years got messed up with the implementation of the SAT prep course,” Acosta said at the meeting. “We want to take AP classes or honors classes or other specialized courses that we have to take prerequisites for, but now our plans have gotten messed up.”
Victoria Rossos explained that she had to give up taking public speaking so she could replace it with the SAT prep class.
“I had to switch out public speaking, which is a class that would definitely help me with a lot of life skills in order to make room for this class in my schedule,” the WOHS freshman said at the meeting. “That’s just an example of how it’s unfair to people who want to take courses that are going to help them grow as a person and feed their interests in order to make room for this class.”
Klausner made a suggestion to the BOE and administration that he feels would alleviate these problems for students.
“As a solution to this issue I would suggest that students should be able to opt out of taking this class with parental consent,” he said. “Because the scores for the PSAT don’t get back until the middle of sophomore year, so students already have to take two half-year courses instead of a full-year course that they might be wanting to take.”
The students were not the only ones protesting the SAT class being mandatory — they had parental support as well.
“I do think it would be a good thing to have an option for an SAT class, so that people wouldn’t have to rely on the private marketplace, but I don’t think it should be mandatory,” parent Robin Isserles said at the meeting. “I wonder if there would be consideration to make this an elective, just like the many other wonderful electives that our students have the option to take.”
Lisa Bennett said that many colleges are beginning to not require SAT scores as part of the application from students, and elective classes that students want to be in might be more beneficial.
“This isn’t a state mandate, it’s not required for graduation,” Bennett said at the meeting. “It should be offered as an optional elective. I think there are a lot of other things that a student has to deal with in choosing their courses and it should be up to the parent if their child is going to take an SAT prep course.”
Superintendent Jeffrey Rutzky addressed the concerns by saying that students should not have been told that they are required to take the class during their sophomore year, and not given the option to defer it until they are juniors. He also explained why the SAT class was implemented in the first place.
“We felt at this point in time that the progress hasn’t been made that we wanted to see made with the SAT scores as a district,” he said at the meeting. “The one thing that I heard that should not be happening is that kids are required to take (the prep class) during 10th grade.”
BOE members Sandra Mordecai and Irv Schwarzbaum suggested that the district look into other ways students can take the SAT prep class. Mordecai wanted to explore eighth- and ninth-graders taking it, and Schwarzbaum said holding the class after school could be an option, in addition to allowing students who take SAT classes or tutoring outside the district to opt out.
BOE member Ken Alper also provided suggestions for other possible options at the meeting.
“No one should have to lose orchestra or an AP class or Java or anything like that for an SAT prep class,” he said at the meeting. “If there’s not a way to move it up to junior year maybe we need to look into additional waivers or even if it needs to be mandatory. Maybe there are grades or other tests we could use for waivers or something that predicts PSAT scores.”
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