PAROCHIAL EIGHTH-GRADERS TAKE EXPLORE ACT FOR THE FIRST TIME

Counselors at Notre Dame High School soon may have a new yardstick to measure incoming freshmen.

Eighth-graders attending a number of parochial schools in the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, which includes all of Southeast Missouri, took the EXPLORE ACT standardized test in September. If a diocese testing committee approves the move after reviewing test results, students could be required to take the EXPLORE next year to gauge their academic achievement prior to entering high school.

Several schools in the area took the test this year. St. Mary's Cathedral Grade School principal Carol Strattman said her school was one that participated.

"A lot of the schools in our diocese did give the test," said Strattman. "We hope it will give us a good standardization for all the schools that feed into Notre Dame and give them a better gauge for placing students."

The EXPLORE is similar in test makeup and scoring style to the ACT college entrance exam. It is a scholastic achievement test written specifically for eighth-grade students.

Notre Dame freshmen counselor Brad Wittenborn said if the test is adopted it will make class placement for freshmen easier for counselors.

"Students' education programs haven't been exactly the same," Wittenborn said. "We use several methods to try to place students in classrooms where they'll have the most success. This test would give us something that would be a standard everyone would have."

Wittenborn said the test would also help because it exposes students to an interest inventory. "Another guidance component is career placement, and students who take the test will have been exposed to an interest inventory that serves as a career pathway," he said. "It will help us see what possible careers may interest a student."

The EXPLORE test is one in a series produced by ACT test writers, said Wittenborn. Notre Dame sophomores take the ACT PLAN achievement test, which has a similar testing style, and most of the school's juniors and seniors take the ACT college entrance exam at some point, he said.

Testing students in this way exposes them to the ACT testing style at least twice before they take the college boards, Wittenborn said. This familiarizes students with it and helps them feel more confident about the college entrance exam.

"It also gives us a standard to monitor and evaluate our curriculum in a series of tests," he said.