There’s no place like home for test-takers

Deirdre Newman

Stress is to taking the SAT in another county as comfort is to a

familiar environment.

This analogy played itself out over the past week as hundreds of

Newport Harbor High students, who thought they might have to venture

all the way to Los Angeles to take the dreaded Scholastic Aptitude

Test, found out they could take it at their own school after all --

albeit a month later than they intended.

The resolution capped a week of nail-biting, with officials at

Educational Testing Service -- the company that coordinates SAT

testing -- and Newport Harbor High School administrators blamed each

other for the snafu.

Eventually, a staff member at the school volunteered to coordinate

the testing, sending waves of relief throughout the Newport Harbor

High community.

“Kids in this area want to go to their home school because they’re

more comfortable,” parent Bob Glassic said. “If you send them to

downtown L.A., they will be scared to death that their cars will be

broken into. Putting them into a whole different community, you’re

changing the whole atmosphere.”

The mix-up became apparent last weekend when parents of the 385

students who registered online in August to take the

college-admissions test at Newport Harbor on Oct. 12 received a

letter from the testing service informing them the school would not

be a testing facility. Instead, their children were directed to go to

Locke High School in Los Angeles.

The previous testing coordinator, who left the school last year,

contacted Education Testing Service in March and let them know it

would no longer be hosting the test, assistant principal Kathy

Slawson said. But service officials claim that the school canceled at

the last minute, causing them to scramble to find a location for the

300-plus students, spokesman Kevin Gonzalez said. Finally, they came

up with Locke.

After they received notice -- a mere two weeks before the

scheduled testing date -- some livid parents, such as Glassic,

subjected the testing service to a barrage of phone calls. They were

able to get their children transferred to Corona del Mar High School

for next week’s testing date.

But that still left more than 300 SAT-takers stuck in Los Angeles.

So, for the past few days, school officials tried to work with the

service to have them send a coordinator, Slawson said. The school

made a concerted effort to find a replacement for the previous

coordinator, but no one jumped at the opportunity, Slawson added.

“There were multiple tries that went out to faculty, classified

and certificated staff, and the situation was that [the service] pays

very little and [they have] not been willing to increase the amount

of pay for the large number of hours that people have to coordinate

all of this and proctor it,” Slawson said.

The company pays a supervisor of 385 students $270, a test

administrator $82 and a proctor $67 for about a five-hour period,

Gonzalez said.

Finally, on Thursday, a staff member volunteered to coordinate

testing for the school, said Peggy Anatol, Newport-Mesa Unified’s

director of assessment.

Now, the service is offering a free transfer from the October

testing date to the November testing date at Newport Harbor High, so

students can be more at ease taking the grueling test at their own

school.

Glassic, who teaches part time at Chapman University, said there

are probably a lot of retired teachers in the area who would be

interesting in helping out with the testing at Newport Harbor.