Other skills needed beyond those of ACT

The article on the failure of our high school students to pass the ACT was very concerning.

As a high school teacher, I am also concerned that our students cannot pass the ACT and I am doing all that I can in my classroom to change that.

However, I am also concerned about other, more real problems of which the community and the colleges should be aware.

I do not want to graduate students that are merely good test-takers, or even merely good workers.

The ISAT, PSAE, and ACT measure, among other things, the ability of a student to work silently and independently for several hours in a row.

For the most part they have to choose from answers someone else designed and are not able to defend their answers, so they are often only tested on their guessing ability.

Those are not terribly useful skills in today's world.

Skills that would be more useful would be the ability to work constructively in a group, to solve problems constructively, to demonstrate self-discipline, to form and defend opinions, and to be a person with generally strong moral character.

I would take a person with those skills over a person without them and a 36 on the ACT, although I'd certainly like to have both.

When journalists focus too much on the ACT, we forget that there are larger, more complex goals.

They are harder to teach, harder to assess and harder to live without.

Rod Watson Gifford Street High School Elgin