College Board
2001
You may already know all you need about the College Board's recent release of the 2000-1 SAT scores. Even though this test remains controversial, though some colleges are backing away from it, and though everyone knows the test-taking population is not representative of the U.S. student population (it included 45% of 2001 high school graduates) and that it changes over time, these numbers are still widely used as a barometer of the performance of K-12 education. The short version: math was flat last year, verbal up a single point. The College Board wants you to think this is good news, part of a decade-long rising trend. Some of us remember, though, that this was the same decade when the Board opted to "re-center" all its scores because they had sagged so badly. Indeed, if you adjust for the re-centering and look over a longer period of time, the news is none too good, especially with respect to the verbal score, now at 506 compared to 530 in 1972. Math is somewhat rosier-514 today versus 509 in 1972-and surely better than its low of 492 in the early 1980's. It's also important to note, as Education Secretary Rod Paige commented, that the new data reveal as grave a black-white test score gap as ever-though both have risen. And the College Board itself remarked upon the evidence of rampant grade inflation: the GPA of test-takers in 2001 was 3.28, compared with 3.10 a decade earlier, and test-takers with A averages now number 41%, compared with 28% in 1991. Moreover, the SAT scores of the A students are themselves declining (not too surprising, as more youngsters are found in that sub-population). As Secretary Paige remarked, there's reason for concern if SAT scores are basically flat, NAEP scores are basically flat yet the kids themselves are getting ever rosier feedback from teachers and schools concerning their academic performance. In the penetrating query of a USA Today editorial, "What are parents supposed to think when their A-average children turn in test scores that are, well, average?" For more information you can contact the College Board staff at (212) 713-8502 or surf to http://www.collegeboard.org/press/senior01/html/082801.html.
