ACT cancelled in test centers across Asia
A few days before the September 9th ACT test, students across Asia received notification that the test would not be administered due to evidence of cheating.“ACT has received credible evidence that test materials intended for administration at your test center have been compromised,” read an email from the ACT organization. “Accordingly, ACT took the difficult but appropriate step of cancelling the test administration to ensure the fairness of the exam for all examinees.”
According to an article from the Washington Post, Ed Colby, a spokesman for the ACT, said “he could not provide more information because of the ongoing investigation.” The ACT’s anti-cheating procedure is a complex multi-step process, and it’s difficult to tell at what point in the process the tests were leaked.
In response, many students planning on taking it were equally vexed by what followed: “The September 9 test date will not be rescheduled. Please do not report to the test center or contact the school.”Students wanting to take the ACT needed to change to a later date, a move that seemed dire for many eleventh and twelfth graders who were banking on the September test.
“Sure, they are trying to avoid cheating, but I don’t think this is the best way [to handle things],” said Cindy Huang (11B).
The cancellation of the ACT was heavily discussed on the Internet platform Reddit, where test takers from Russia, Pakistan, New Zealand, India and Vietnam reported their local test centers being shut down. While some were angered by the abrupt cancellation, others felt it the correct course of action given evidence of cheating.
This is not the first time that the ACT has been cancelled due to evidence of cheating, though this is the first time it has happened on such a large scale. In 2016, testing centers in Korea and China were shut down for similar reasons.
Despite the mass inconvenience caused, no alternate test date was given before the October ACT, and students will need to take the test at a later unknown test date.