This is a do-over that most people won’t want to complete. A handful of students in Texas were forced to retake their SATs after their exams flew out of a UPS truck that was meant to be delivering the completed tests.
The incident affected students who took the test on October 27, 2022. According to the El Paso Independent School District, staff were able to recover all but 55 sheets that had flown out of the UPS truck. It’s unclear as to how many, if any, of the sheets recovered were acceptable. The remaining sheets were either lost or destroyed.
“El Paso ISD is working closely with the College Board to determine a remedy for the El Paso High School students whose SAT exams were lost in transit after they were securely submitted to UPS,” a spokesperson for the school district said in a statement.
The college board also said that “occasionally test materials are lost in transit” and that it would continue to work with the school “to ensure that students are able to retest as soon as possible” and “provide options for the impacted students.”
“Counselors are providing students, interested in taking the ACT, with waivers to retake the exam at no cost. Deadline is November 4; exam is December 10 at El Paso High,” the district’s statement continued.
Zyenna Martinez, the school’s student body president, was concerned that students’ personal details might be compromised since some of the test sheets are still missing.
“On the test score sheets, we have all of our information and identification on the score — our location where we live, our address, our date of birth, all of our information. And it stinks because our identity is out there right now. Some people could have picked up some flyers,” Martinez said.
UPS did issue an apology and said employees are “working to recover as many tests as possible.” They were also working with the school to resolve the tricky situation.