CLINTON — When Tanner DeYoung found out that he scored perfect on the American College Test, he texted his whole family with the news.
“I realized a lot of options were about to open up for me,” he said.
The Clinton High School junior scored a 36 on the test that was administered in December. He attributes the score to hard work and to the Humanities test prep course offered at CHS.
Humanities is a course offered to 11th grade students who have taken the PSAT as 10th graders and intend to take the national qualifier exam as juniors.
“The class is a half-credit course that meets before school as an early period,” said CHS teacher Chasidy Burns. “Students in this class rotate between three teachers for a semester, spending a week at a time with each teacher.”
This amounts to about six weeks of preparation in each content area over the course of a semester. One teacher focuses on reading comprehension, one on writing and grammar, and one on math.
“During the second nine weeks, students are prepared for the ACT and are encouraged to take the ACT in December,” she said. “In addition to an intense test prep course, the students are also given advice and mentored in a question and answer session by students who have taken both the course and the two tests.”
The ACT college readiness assessment is a curriculum and standards based tool that assesses students’ academic readiness for college. It is administered to all Mississippi students in 11th grade, but students can take it multiple times.
Tanner said the perfect score came on his third attempt at the test.
Tanner is the son of Danny and Paula DeYoung. He said he plans to major in political science but has not yet decided on a college.