A new ACT incentive is being offered to juniors at Rhinelander High School (RHS) as of the 2018-2019 school year. RHS is allowing juniors who score a 25 or higher  than their projected scores from the ACT Aspire test to be exempted from certain finals.

This was newly introduced this year, in an attempt to give students the incentive to do better on the ACT, according to English teacher, Ms. Jensen. The school wants to increase the overall ACT scores within the school, and the faculty, along with Ms. Jensen, believe that the incentive will be a useful tool.

This new incentive begs the question of whether or not this incentive will place more pressure on students to do well on the ACT. 

Holly Puza, a junior at RHS said, “This incentive isn’t putting more pressure on me, it is just encouraging me to do well because not only will I get the good score as a reward, I also won’t have to do a lot of my finals.” 

Ms. Jensen has a similar opinion about its effect on students. She said, “I don’t think it will add extra pressure I just think it will reward kids in a good way.”

The idea of the incentive is to get kids interested in achieving greatness on the ACT, not to place extra pressure them. They want to give students a reason to do better on the ACT, so this incentive may urge students to study more and take the exam more seriously

The amount of juniors that benefit from this will depend on the amount of students who score higher than their project score, or a 25 or above. The finals that will be exempt are the finals in the core subjects covered on the ACT such as English, math, and science. The exemption is dependent on whether or not the teacher will allow it. 

Programs are being offered to help students increase their ACT scores, such as flex programs focused on parts of the exam, and after school ACT prep. Teachers and staff can be assured that students are taking this seriously.

Ms. Jensen says, It’s really nice to see kids getting involved in the offered programs.”