Posted on 09/24/2012 7:54:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
NPR's Claudio Sanchez brings us this bit of bad academic news: The class of 2012 scored the lowest average SAT reading score since 1972. A bit of good news is that math scores were up.
Claudio filed this report for our Newscast unit:
"Writing, too, is down nine points since the SAT introduced a writing section in 2006. The average score in math was 514 out of 800, five points higher than it was 40 years ago.
"Just under 1.7 million high school seniors took the test. Nearly half were racial or ethnic minorities. A fourth did not grow up speaking English at home. Asians outscored White, Black and Latinos. But overall, according to the College Board which commissions the SAT's, 6 in ten test takers are not prepared for college level work. Experts say this is a clear indication that academically, high schools are just not rigorous enough."
In a press release, College Board President Gaston Caperton said these scores should be a "call to action to expand access to rigor for more students."
"Our nation's future depends on the strength of our education system. When less than half of kids who want to go to college are prepared to do so, that system is failing," he said.
And, as we've reported, this kind of news just keeps coming. In Sept. 2011, we reported that the reading scores were already in bad shape then. And, last month, we reported that according to the ACT , just "25 percent of high schoolers who took the test are college ready."
Doesn’t make sense since they redid the scoring. I wonder if they take that into consideration. For example, they have to write an essay now.
It’s simple. The teachers just need more money. /s
Asserting that reading scores in 1972 were as low as today’s is ridiculous. There is no way in hell.
I'd love to compare the raw scores. If, in 1972, 85 correct out of 140 gave you a score of 450, and now, if 80 correct out of 140 gives you a score of 450, that, to me, doesn't mean the scores are equivalent. They might call 80 out of 140 an 800. Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas.
(My numbers are just illustrative, not based upon actual scoring, other than the fact that they "recentered" the results several years ago so that fewer correct answers are now needed to get scores that are equivalent to those on tests administered before the "recentering.")
There is a 200 point increase awarded in the baseline score in each of both math and verbal that did not exist in 1972.
In normalized terms SAT scores have declined every year since 1978. The basis point increase is not the only change that makes year-over-year comparisons difficult: the penalty for guessing has been lowered, a subjective (essay) section worth 800 points has been added, and the scaling (i.e.curve) is constantly being "improved," to, as Michael Mann might say "hide the decline."
Everybody who has taught undergrads in the last 40 years has noticed this; it's even obvious in our top math, science, and engineering students.
The test was “renormed” in the 90s, which effectively raised scores by about 150 points in total on the verbal and math.
The College Board i spart of the ed establishment, and they have been lying for a long time to cover up the failure of government schools and our highly trained education professionals.
Old New New
Verbal Math
800 800 800
790 800 800
780 800 800
770 800 790
760 800 770
750 800 760
740 800 740
730 800 730
720 790 720
710 780 700
700 760 690
690 750 680
680 740 670
670 730 660
660 720 650
650 710 650
640 700 640
630 690 630
620 680 620
610 670 610
600 670 600
590 660 600
580 650 590
570 640 580
560 630 570
550 620 560
540 610 560
530 600 550
520 600 540
510 590 530
500 580 520
490 570 520
480 560 510
470 550 500
460 540 490
450 530 480
440 520 480
430 510 470
420 500 460
410 490 450
400 480 440
390 470 430
380 460 430
370 450 420
360 440 410
350 430 400
340 420 390
330 410 380
320 400 370
310 390 350
300 380 340
290 370 330
280 360 310
270 350 300
260 340 280
250 330 260
240 310 240
230 300 220
220 290 200
210 270 200
200 230 200
I recently got an iced tea at a 7-11. Price was $2.02. I gave the kid a twenty and two cents. Kid looked flummoxed. He had to enter the data into the register to realize that I was due $18 in return.
Normed in 1996. For instance a 1992 math score of 480 would be equivalent to a 2012 score of 514. Of course thw difficulty of the materialnow is easier than back in the day. English scores are even worse. America is in a world of hurt.
Mean SAT score for all schools was 491 which would be the equivalent of 410 in 1992. Time to norm again.
I just started teaching high school biology and physical science after a mid-life career change. I'm appalled at what I'm seeing. Of the incoming freshmen in our urban parochial school, about half have reading levels below 5th grade. Some of the conduct issues are a learning impediment and stress me out. What really breaks my heart though is seeing these high school age kids who cannot extract meaning from a textbook to save their lives. I don't know how on earth I'm going to teach them anything resembling the content standard when they read on such a low level.
High school rigor is only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that they are not learning what they need at lower levels. These are failures of elementary education which never really get addressed.
The SAT was ‘recentered’ in 2002 because the original scale was based on male, white, Ivy league scores. The PDF titled “The Recentering of
SAT® Scales and Its Effects
on Score Distributions and
Score Interpretations” is located here: http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/pdf/200211_20702.pdf
and it explains why SAT was ‘recentered in 2002’. But here’s a quote:
“The testtaking
population was no longer mostly restricted to a
selective self-selected group of students applying to Ivy
League colleges and other prestigious Eastern colleges.
World War II had changed the role of women. The GI
Bill had expanded educational opportunity. College
Board member colleges had gone from 44 to 350
between 1941 and 1961, nearly a nine-fold increase.
Many of these new colleges came from the South and
the West. Scholarship programs had also expanded
opportunity. These increases in educational opportunity
resulted in changed populations and presented scaling
problems for the 1941-42 scales.”
Did you get the wide-eyed question, "Did you do that...in your head?"
I was never interested in religious education, and my parents weren't either, so I was in public school until 8th grade. After the first year of Junior High, I'd had enough. I literally learned NOTHING in an entire year; the place was a friggin' zoo. We had ARMED security in each wing and on every floor of that place -- and this was in 1967. After the Easter Break, a ninth grader came into a votech class and shot his girlfriend and the shop teacher who tried to reason with him. I can't even imagine what goes on there now. I do know that in the last ten years or so that I've been following the school it has never come in higher than 480 in theTribune Reviews PA school district rankings. Two of those years it was not even on the list (came in lower than #500.)
I couldn't believe how different the Catholic School was. It goes without saying the nuns were punitive and nasty. But you could actually learn there...
Anyway, having taught undergrads for around a decade in the 1980's the decline was clearly visible over that period. I never used my Physics PhD and have been considering teaching math and/or science as a retirement option. The kicker: my Alma Mater wants (minimum) $30K for a teaching certification. But that's another story ...
I was never interested in religious education, and my parents weren't either, so I was in public school until 8th grade. After the first year of Junior High, I'd had enough. I literally learned NOTHING in an entire year; the place was a friggin' zoo. We had ARMED security in each wing and on every floor of that place -- and this was in 1967. After the Easter Break, a ninth grader came into a votech class and shot his girlfriend and the shop teacher who tried to reason with him. I can't even imagine what goes on there now. I do know that in the last ten years or so that I've been following the school it has never come in higher than 480 in theTribune Reviews PA school district rankings. Two of those years it was not even on the list (came in lower than #500.)
I couldn't believe how different the Catholic School was. It goes without saying the nuns were punitive and nasty. But you could actually learn there...
Anyway, having taught undergrads for around a decade in the 1980's the decline was clearly visible over that period. I never used my Physics PhD and have been considering teaching math and/or science as a retirement option. The kicker: my Alma Mater wants (minimum) $30K for a teaching certification. But that's another story ...
Public schools were a combat zone when I graduated in the 90s.
Obama's America: Student Reading SAT Scores Hit Record Lows
Neither story mentions the impact of immigration, legal and illegal. They just mention that somehow we have all these students who can't speak English.
We are not the same country we were in 1972 when one in 21 was foreign born. Today it is one in 8, the highest it has been in 90 years. Demography is destiny.
Yep, I teach eighth graders. If I had my way - we’d spend all our time reading and getting the kids to read quickly and well.
Most have difficulty reading.
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