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STAR LEDGER: 'State SAT scores of college-bound has surprises'..."Of 85,000 students in New Jersey's Class of 2008 who are bound for college this fall, a slight majority are girls and nearly 40 percent are minority..." EDUCATION WEEK - 'SAT Scores Flat as Test-Taking Edges Upward'...Overall SAT scores remained flat this year amid continued but slowing growth in the number of high school seniors taking the widely used college-entrance exam..."
Star Ledger: State SAT scores of college-bound has surprises
By John Mooney, 8-27-08
Of 85,000 students in New Jersey's Class of 2008 who are bound for college this fall, a slight majority are girls and nearly 40 percent are minority.
They averaged a B/B+ in high school -- the girls doing better in virtually every subject -- and if there was one course they took that was the best predictor of a high score on the SAT college entrance test, it was calculus and then maybe Chinese or Latin.
There were also a couple of surprises from the latest College Board report of New Jersey's college-bound seniors, which came out today with the annual release of SAT averages here and nationwide.
For instance, more than a third of New Jersey's 2008 graduates who took the SAT said they came from homes where a parent gained no more than a high school diploma, an indication that many are their families' first generation to go on to college.
And a little more than half are expected to stay close to home at an in-state school, with Rutgers drawing the most applications among public institutions and Seton Hall tops among the privates.
"We are seeing a change where more kids seem to be looking at in-state schools," said Robert Murphy, principal of East Brunswick High School, where 97 percent of students go on to two- or four-year college. "Maybe it's an economic thing, or just don't want to travel as much."
Still, outside New Jersey, the most popular schools aren't too far afield: Penn State, University of Delaware, and New York University. And in or out of state, the top three intended majors were business (17 percent), health services (16 percent) and education (10 percent), mirroring national preferences.
The nuggets of information are contained in the annual profile of New Jersey high school seniors who took the SAT, encompassing a vast majority of students with at least plans for four-year college, if not all actually enrolling.
This year's SAT averages in themselves are not all that notable, as they were close to those in 2007 and typically change little from year to year.
Nationally, the averages didn't shift a single point from last year: 515 in math, 502 in reading, and 494 in writing, each out of a maximum 800.
The stable scores end a two-year drop in the averages since revisions in the SAT that added a writing section and made other sections more difficult. College Board officials also highlighted that the number of students taking the exam continues to rise.
"More than ever, they reflect the face of education in this country," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. "We're gratified to see that our country is moving increasingly toward being a nation of college graduates."
The averages were better news in New Jersey, where scores were up slightly overall, the biggest gain a three-point increase in math to 513. The state's reading average of 495 was unchanged, and writing was up 2 points to 496.
The gaps remained wide between different ethnic and racial groups, but it was enough of an improvement to earn plaudits from state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy.
"Clearly, our students and teachers are taking college preparedness seriously, and that is extraordinarily gratifying," she said in a statement. "As we move further into an increasingly global economy, we want to ensure New Jersey's students are capable of leading the way."
SAT Scores Flat as Test-Taking Edges UpwardBy Scott J. Cech
Overall SAT scores remained flat this year amid continued but slowing growth in the number of high school seniors taking the widely used college-entrance exam, according to a report released today by the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit organization that owns the exam.
The mean composite score of 1511 on a scale of 600 to 2400 for the class of 2008 was the same as it was for the class of 2007, and identical across all three sections of the exam: 502 in the critical-reading section, 515 in the mathematics section, and 494 in the writing section. Each section has a minimum score of 200 and a maximum score of 800.
Scores were down slightly from those of the class of 2007 on the critical-reading section among all ethnic and racial groups except whites, who improved by 1 point.
White students and those identified as “Asians, Asian-Americans, or Pacific Islanders” posted the only gains on the math section; all other groups showed point losses in the low single digits. And on the writing section, only students in the Asian/Pacific Islander category improved on last year’s crop of scores.
“We’re encouraged that the scores are staying relatively stable,” Laurence Bunin, the senior vice president of operations and general manager of the SAT program for the College Board, said in a conference call with reporters. When asked for an explanation of the flat scores, he said, “It’s very hard to say.”
Reaction Muted
The scores ended a two-year trend of slightly falling scores since 2006, the first year in which students took the retooled exam, which included the addition of a writing section. Still, SAT experts were cautious in their appraisal of the numbers.
“It’s certainly better to see scores flat rather than a decrease,” said David Silver, a senior researcher at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The fact that more students seem to be taking [the SAT], and the score’s staying steady, is encouraging. But I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
Robert Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a Cambridge, Mass.-based testing-watchdog group that is often critical of the College Board, agreed.
“You don’t know about the trend until you see several years of data—we need to wait and watch whether this is an anomaly or a new trend,” he said.
In this year’s graduating high school class, 1.52 million students took the SAT—a 1.6 percent increase over last year’s class.
Participation for whites rose 2 percentage points relative to other ethnic and racial groups, while it was up 1 percentage point from last year’s levels among Asians, Asian-Americans, and Pacific Islanders and 1 percentage point among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Relative participation among all other ethnic and racial groups was flat.
The number of students not identifying themselves as members of any ethnic or racial group, including “other,” accounted for 5 percent of all test-takers among this year’s class. That proportion marked a decrease of 4 percentage points from last year.
Despite the growth in the number of test-takers, Mr. Schaeffer argued in an e-mail that “the SAT is losing popularity among college-bound seniors, defined as either a percentage of high school graduates who take the test ... or as market share in comparison with the ACT.” He added that the proportion of graduates who take the SAT is “down from 47.5 percent in the class of 2005, the last to take the ‘old’ SAT, to 46 percent in the class of 2008, based on National Center for Educational Statistics data and projections.”
Participation in the rival ACT exam, owned by the nonprofit Iowa City, Iowa-based test-maker ACT Inc., surged 9 percent between the classes of 2007 and 2008, to about 1.42 million test-takers. Thanks in part to the addition of Michigan to the list of states requiring the ACT as part of their statewide assessment systems, just the last year of growth for the ACT exceeded the 8 percent growth in SAT test-taking over the last five years, according to the College Board. Among members of the class of 2008, about 97,000 more took the SAT than took the ACT.
Mr. Bunin played down the ACT’s growth.
“It doesn’t cause us to reevaluate the [SAT],” he said of the tightening competition. “We don’t do this as a horse race.”
Gender Gaps Persist
In line with previous graduating classes, gender gaps persisted on this year’s SAT. Despite narrowing score differences between men and women on some other standardized math exams in recent years, the mean math score on the SAT for men among this year’s graduating class was 533 out of a possible 800 points, 33 points higher than the mean score for women. That’s the smallest difference in years, but still substantial.
Female students continue to take the test in greater numbers than their male peers; in this year’s class, 54 percent of test-takers were female.
“There is certainly no clear explanation of why the male-female math gap has disappeared on most state tests but not on the SAT,” Jim Hull, the education policy analyst for the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va., said in an e-mail. “One reason that I heard is that a greater number of minority females than minority males take the SAT, which may suppress female scores. It also just may be because more females are going to college, so a greater variability of SAT/ACT [scores] is found for females.”
“There have traditionally been differences on how men and women—girls and boys—do” on different sections, Mr. Bunin said. He called the SAT “a fair test,” however.
Men also hold a long-standing but much-smaller edge on the critical-reading section: Among this year’s class, they had a mean score of 504 while female students averaged 500.
But in the three years the writing section has been administered, women have performed better than men. This year, the mean score for female test-takers was 501 on the writing section; male students managed only a mean score of 488.
The College Board calculates its SAT-score statistics using one test per student; no matter how many times a student takes the SAT, only his or her latest score is counted for the purposes of the College Board’s SAT report.
Vol. 28, Issue 02
