SAT scores take biggest dip in decade
Average national SAT scores fell by 7 points last year, the largest drop since 1975 and only the second time average scores have fallen in the past 15 years, the College Board reported Tuesday. The drooping figures come the same year the College Board introduced its new 2,400-point test to all students.
Scores had been climbing steadily throughout the 1990s and into this decade. But both math and reading scores fell last year, math by 2 points and reading by 5. Last year also saw the first decline since 1991 in the total number of students taking the SAT: about 9,800 fewer students took the test in 2006 than in 2005. The lowered scores were not unexpected. College admissions officials contacted the College Board last spring after they noticed large declines in their applicants' scores.
Now, education professionals are faced with the difficult task of figuring out exactly what the slide means. In the past, the College Board has linked rising SAT scores to rising student achievement in high school courses. But this year the test maker said the drop in scores did not necessarily mean a drop in achievement. "We overemphasize the small point differences, and I've come to feel that more today than ever," said Gaston Caperton, the College Board president. "You have to look for trend data. This is a one-year fluctuation."
The College Board also dismissed suggestions the added length of the new test might have led to lower scores. An internal study showed fatigue had no effect on students' performance, said Wayne Camara, the College Board's vice president for research and analysis. The study—which compares performance on earlier questions to performance on later ones — will be released publicly next month, Camara said.
Camara pointed to two other factors to explain the decline. One is a drop in the number of students who retook the test. According to the College Board, taking the SAT a second time increases a student's score by an average of 30 points. But in 2006, the number of students who took the test more than once declined by 3 percent.
Camara also cited changes in the test itself. The new test has no analogies, more critical reading passages, and beefed-up math questions changes that could have made it harder for students with weaker course loads to do well. Camara says his data show that the gap between students who take more challenging high school courses and students with less rigorous ones widened considerably in 2006.
But critics yesterday challenged the College Board's analysis, suggesting the score drop actually represents one more blow to the testmaker's credibility. "When you're dealing with colleges that are dealing with thousands of applications, the numbers matter," says Christine Parker, executive director of the Princeton Review's high school development program. "If the scores start to vary a lot, it's really hard for [admissions officers] to know from year to year—what does the number actually mean?"
Parker offered another explanation for the drop: Perhaps students are retaking the new SAT less often because they just don't like it. Since the College Board released its new SAT—which is not only 45 minutes longer but $13.50 pricier—the Princeton Review has watched students move away from it and toward its major competitor, the ACT.
The new SAT results may also add evidence to another criticism of the test. If the College Board reports relatively large fluctuations in results without linking them at all to real changes in high school curricula, asks Bob Schaeffer of the advocacy group Fair Test, is its test really a good "common yardstick"? In the past few years, hundreds of colleges have made moves to distance themselves from the SAT. According to a list compiled by Fair Test, 736 schools have made it possible for some or all of their applicants to apply without taking the test.
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