This year, Westside High School is implementing new ACT incentives in hopes of getting scores up to the goal of 21 or above. These new incentives were kickstarted by Tola Dada and Tom Kerkman.
“Last spring, Kerkman and I were trying to think of what we can do to give kids a little incentive, and reward kids that are doing a really good job on the ACT,” Dada said. “A lot of kids don’t have the motivation. Whether it’s college or scholarships or that kind of thing some kids need a little bit extra motivation.”
The hopes are that by getting these scores up, it will not only improve life for students that are looking at getting into colleges that may require a certain score, but also for the district and its taxpayers.
“We just know how important the ACT is, because that’s how schools are measured,” Dada said. “You know, when people open the paper and they look at Westside, we want to make sure that score is as good as it can be.”
School counselor Lauri Cunningham is hopeful that these incentives will help reluctant students be more motivated for the ACT.
“I think it will help reluctant students who are hesitant about studying and trying to improve their score,” Cunningham said. “So I think it motivates some, not all, but I think there’s some pretty good incentives.”
One of these new incentives is reserved parking spots, five for seniors and five for this year’s juniors. These reserved spots are special as they are by the main building doors, and guarantee parking for the year which is a privilege worth a lot of money.
“That’s a really big deal, you know. So that’s a big motivation, because we know, like with the [Westside] Foundation, when they auction off those parking spots, those parking spots go for 5000 bucks,” Dada said. “So it just really shows how important those spots are. So if we, you know, offered, you know, rock star parking for ACT scores that might give kids a little bit of push.”
Additionally, this growth is very important to students who may need a certain score for college, or would just like to see improvement. For this reason, they are also offering homecoming dance tickets and activity passes.
“Because we always want to be getting better, we want to teach students that it’s important,” Dada said. “ Growth is also important, not necessarily just what you get in that one day, but you may get a certain score the first time.”
Another aspect with growth is that your name will be put up on the wall outside of the counseling IMC if you grow.
“You get your name up on the published up on the wall that has all the names who have improved their ACT score,” Cunningham said.
They are also offering Westside shirts to students that improve or hit the district goal of 21 or above, or if you get a perfect 36 on the ACT.
“I think they’re like, rollside t-shirts, Westside t-shirts as well,” Dada said. “So the three things are 21 or higher, if you grow five points or more, or you get a perfect score.”
The overall goal is to see this jump to over 21 average ACT scores within the next 3-5 years.
“I think we’ll see a jump,” Dada said. “I think we’ll see the growth over three years or so. It’s also important to know that each group of students, or each class is different. You know, what may happen in 2019 may not be the same in 2025. But I think with the stuff that we’re doing in classes, as well as the incentives, can give us an overall bump up.”
Students that have taken the ACT in the past will notice one significant change this year–the ACT is being done online instead of paper. While Dada doesn’t predict that online verses paper will impact scores, there is a minor concern with overloading the internet during this time, so changes have been made to previous years.
“So we’re going to do it online now,” Dada said. “There’s an obvious challenge with that, you know, networking issues and glitches. So we’ve added another day where it’s sophomores, so we’re gonna do it on a separate day, so that way you don’t have too many kids going at once. So we’ll just have the juniors only doing it online. And I think that the process would just be just that much better.”
Another reason that the ACT is important, and another incentive to try your best on it is that colleges will use it for scholarships and course placement. A lot of colleges are also no longer test optional like they were during Covid.
“Most colleges now will take your ACT and some like UNL might give scholarships based on your score,” Cunningham said. “Some colleges want it as a placement. ‘Oh, you got this score in reading or English, let’s put you in this English class in college’, colleges during the covid era, and they were like test optional, but we see some did not keep that status, and they’re now becoming Non test optional, whatever they’re requiring the ACT for entrance. So you may not have to put the ACT in right when you are applying to college, but eventually they will ask for the ACT.”
With all these incentives and the switch from paper to online testing, it is important that each student tries their best, but makes sure not to put too much pressure on themselves. No matter what the test score, these incentives are meant to be fun.
“It’s fun because it’s exciting, you know,” Dada said. “So we did the drawing for the first five spots and our expectations assembly. Just seeing people clapping and happy for their friends and stuff like that, just another way to have some fun at school while also helping them improve our overall scores.”
