Less than four months after the Illinois State Board of Education entered a contract to provide and mandate the ACT in high schools statewide, the ISBE realized they had made a mistake drawing the terms of the contract: the ACT would not provide fee waivers for low income students to submit the scores of tests taken in high school to colleges.
Erin Dreisbach, the College and Career Coach at Lane Tech, said that she first noticed this issue in October when the fee waivers she had issued to students completing their college applications were not working.
“I flagged this, talked to some people higher up than me at the Illinois State Board of Education, and also in CPS,” Dreisbach said, thus beginning a weeks-long process of renegotiation with the ACT.
Dreisbach, the College and Career Coach at Lane Tech, said that this came as a surprise to officials across the state of Illinois, because this had not previously been an issue with the SAT.
“For the last five years, we’ve taken the SAT as part of the school day,” Dreisbach said. “When the SAT was done during the school day, we could give low-income students fee waivers to send their test scores for the tests they took during the school day forever. I even sent them during the summer.”
In June of 2024, however, this contract with the SAT came to an end, allowing the state to reevaluate which college admissions exam vendor they preferred.
Offering a science section and a more highly rated testing experience at lower costs than the SAT, the ACT exam seemed to be the favorable option, and was awarded a new deal with the ISBE — notably omitting what had come to be seen as standard provisions for low income students.
Explaining, Dreisbach said, “Every student can do score sends immediately after taking an ACT. You get your score, I think, and you have two weeks or something to send it. But low-income students cannot send that score again additional times for free. They have to spend $20 per school per score, which really adds up for low-income students as they navigate the process or they tend to change their plans more during the summer.”
For instance Dreisbach explained, students attending city colleges without fee waivers to send ACT scores may have had to take additional placement tests at each college, an option which could also become costly.
The ACT website states that qualifying for a fee waiver means “You can send additional ACT score reports for free to colleges and/or scholarship agencies at any time during your college search process. Your fee waiver covers one report to your high school and up to six college choices. After registration, you can request unlimited score reports for free.”
However, the website failed to specify that only students who take the national version of ACT outside of school would qualify for these waivers, no matter how helpful they can be for students.
Senior Emily Valova, who submitted SAT scores, said that her college application process benefited from policies granting fee waivers.
“Having a waiver really helped me because I didn’t have to worry about the financial aspect, especially because I got a fee waiver for a lot of things, like taking the SAT, submitting the SAT, all of that. So I think it just took away the financial burden,” Valova said.
Due to the advocacy of Ms. Dreisbach and educational officials throughout Illinois, the ISBE ultimately won out, becoming the first state board of education in the nation to convince ACT to provide score-send fee waivers for those who qualify.
Senior Dax Kato said that in recent weeks, he was able to work with his counselor to successfully obtain this waiver — a crucial step in the direction of achieving equitable access to higher education for all high school students.
