How Low Can We Go? SAT scores dropped significantly this year. Blame the schools, not the test.

The explanation is much more straightforward. The average American receives a pretty mediocre education. The average SAT score drifted down from 1000 in the 1960s to 880 in 1993. Education activists attributed this plummet to cultural factors, a change in the testing pool and other matters. The blame was placed everywhere but on schools. That the quality of education in America declined from the 1960s to the 1990s was hardly noted in debates over the SAT.

The truth hurts.

This being the first year of the new test, Universities discounted the writing section...which will be hard to judge in any year. My son took two regular and two subject SAT's. On the essay portion, he ended up scoring much higher on an essay he didn't even finish. I had his english teacher look at both later on....she also could not understand the logic in their assessment, and commented that alot of parents had shown her some wildly scored tests. Given that the essay is scored by individuals based on their own preferences, I'd be surprised if this portion is ever given the same weight as the reading/english or mathematics sections.

Flunky public school teachers, that do NOTHING ALL YEAR but "teach to a test" -- whatever that means! I do know one thing that it means: no more complete courses taught in a year, as it was when I was in school. When I was there, you received a full Algebra course, or a full chemistry course. Not any longer!

And then they blame it on the students that they cannot compete, and cannot find jobs because they are not as smart as the asians, etc.

Well, come on over to homeschooling, and meet the future; those that not only receive full courses, they receive MUCH more! They can answer Alg. II and Calculus problems.

Time to "re-center" them again.

They already race-normed the test a few years back, awarding 400 points for getting one's name in the right space on the test form.
I would like to see them give the 1964 test ver batim next year and then compare the scores of the '07 graduates to the '64 graduates. Then we'd see what the billions we have poured down the rathole of the Dept. of Education and the tens of billions the taxpayers have spend in their local school districts have accomplished.

School choice is the answer. Parents should be allowed to pick the teachers they want and teachers should be allowed to pick the students they want. It will soon become clear to all parties that while perfection is not possible all have an obligation to try to make things work.

When I read the article, it goes into great detail about all the changes in the test, and why these changes would cause the average score to drop.

The subhead makes no sense to me reading this article.

I make no excuses for the quality of education in this country, but it didn't make a dramatic shift downward in a single year. The test changed.

I teach in North Carolina (first year here after several years in NJ and NY), and it is my understanding that one of the school's objectives is to push as many kids as possible into AP and Honors-level courses because these NUMBERS count significantly toward No Child Left Behind scoring. We are currently in the process of gearing up for EOC (End Of Course) exams and, since we are a SCHOOL IN CRISIS, our objective is to achieve a 95% ATTENDANCE NUMBER for taking the test (we will worry about a 95% passing rate later, I suppose--NHMB). We pretty much have a school-wide tutoring session coming up this week to try to get as many kids to pass, though all will insist we're not teaching to the test. This session is primarily a last-ditch effort to get those kids who are failing the class to show up for the test (students will receive some "extra credit" toward their final marking period grade, thereby adding the allure of possibly passing the course should they past the EOC Exam to the mix--now THAT'S education, my friends!)
Like you, I am dealing with the academically disabled. Most of my students (I teach Honors English) have been weakened to the point of being virtually incapable of exerting the kind of effort necessary to succeed. Their parents are largely busy or uninvolved or unconcerned. The popular culture around them promotes the profane and denigrates the good. Their schools accept mediocrity and provide few challenging expectations that will truly prepare them for life after high school. I need to remind my students almost daily that the unreality in their lives is not my challenging course, not my difficult grading, not my "overly" high standards, but those parts of their lives that demand little, expect less or give them something just for showing up...
But, you know, there is a part of me that wonders if maybe I am not just a little crazy for believing so. They have seen far too often that you can go around difficult courses (and other obstacles) in life. You can find someone else that will accept shoddy work--and pay you for it. You can get something just for showing up. And I have had more than a few students walk past me in the halls who razzed me about how they had the failing grade that I gave them changed by their parent.

Is it any wonder with the TERRORIST attacks on America by the liberal education establishment?

Is it any wonder with the preoccupation with social engineering rather than academics?

Is it any wonder with the TREASON taught in the classroom as "education" today to support twisted Teacher's Unions?

· Multiculturalism's War on Education
· Jihad at San Francisco State - SF State leadership ignores the terrorists (How terrorist supporting campus radicals attack Republicans)
· Teacher has kids tasting flavored condoms (Sex-ed teacher admits goal to)
· Diversity on Campus -- THERE IS NONE! (Propaganda and Tyranny from the Left - CENSORSHIP)
· Mich. Parents Protest Pro-Homosexual Posters on Public School Campus (Public Education - Working to make as many children GAY as they can)
· Is NEA a Terrorist Organization? (NEA, Education Corruption, and Communism)
· Teacher Unions in the United States (What is THEIR REAL AGENDA WITH YOUR CHILDREN?)
· Outing the NEA - Teacher's Union to Destroy Your Kids (The NEA Teacher's Union is absolutely intent on sexualizing and warping children)
· Failing Public Schools (How the Public "Schools" have abandoned Education)
· NEA Goals to SEXUALIZE and INDOCTRINATE your Children in Public Schools (Your Tax Dollars at work to PERVERT YOUR SCHOOL KIDS)
· It's Never Enough for the NEA (The NEA is NOT about education, it's about corruption and control)
· How Public Schools have Changed (Radical Liberal-Leftist Democrat Agenda being pushed on kids in school)
· Left Leaning University and TAXPAYER FRAUD! (See what YOUR TAX DOLLARS support!)
· Empowering Teachers to End Teacher Union Tyranny (Strategies and Materials for taking on the Teacher's Unions)
· Legal Action Forces Teacher Union to Respect Rights of Religious Objector (How Teachers can PREVENT THEIR DUES from supporting causes they don't agree with!)
· NEA To Be Prosecuted For Violating Teachers? Civil Rights (NEA ordered to stop harassing teachers with religious objections to supporting union)
· Myth: Schools Need More Money (Financial Corruption of American Education)
· Public school teachers gone wild! (Looney Left infects educational classrooms)

· U.N. Mandate to the United States may Threaten Home Schooling
· Why Homeschooling Continues to Grow (In spite of Education Establishment Attacks - more are being home schooled)
· Home Schooling Benefits Are Real, Widespread (It is no longer debatable that Home Schooling is superior to Public Schooling)

Nobody is blaming the high school teachers. You can't help what you were given to work with. There is a fundamental disconnect, though, between the curriculuum philosophies of the elementary, middle and high schools that is causing serious problems. The elementary schools are not stepping up and taking responsibility for educating their students. If a kid can't read at the end of first grade, no problemm we'll worry about that in second grade. Can't do fractions in fourth grade? Don't worry, they'll be seeing the exact same thing in fifth, second time's the charm.

Then the kids get to middle school, where the thinking is "Gosh, we have to get these kids ready for high school! Let's make sure our curriculuum has an 8th grade algebra course so they can take calculus their senior year if they want!"

Whoops! What am I saying? What the middle schools are really thinking is "We've got to teach these kids responsibility!" And how do they teach them responsibility? That's right, by treating them like they are responsible, because if we treat a bunch of hormone-ridden 11-13 year old like little sensible adults who are seriously interested in knowledge for its own sake they will magically become what we want them to be. In their philosophy, it's not the middle school's responsibility to see their students know how to read, and if they can't by the end of eighth grade, well, that's just the high school's problem.

And then they get to you, and they really are little adults. They haven't got much in the way of practical knowledge, but they have self esteem in buckets, so who are you to tell them what to do.

I don't see how anyone can blame the high school teachers. I'm just surprised they put up with it.

"The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray), you may deny its existence all that you wish but it is still there."

Hey pal. There may be a theoretical bell curve out there which limits how much certain classes of people can ultimately learn, but today's curriculum makes it totally irrelevant. I have first-hand seen this black school in Houston (http://www.imanischool.org) blow the doors off of the best students that predominantly white schools had to offer in math and spelling - and it is very, very, difficult to cheat in a spelling bee when everyone is given the same list of words to study, and then told to spell them publicly. And I seriously doubt these kids are cheating in math. The difference is that they don't play with this experimental crap at the Imani school - they simply teach the basics.

As to the bell curve still existing. Sure, whites still do better than blacks as a group in standardized testing, that is indisputable. And maybe there's some theoretical group maximum that could be obtained if kids had a half decent education - like 1500 (SAT math & verbal) for Asians, 1400 for whites, and 1300 for blacks, but our education system is so lousy for everyone that this bell curve, if real, doesn't even have a chance to factor in (i.e., blacks and whites, as groups, are struggling to simply reach 1000).

So what is going on - easy. For whites is called Sylvan and Kumon Learning Centers. For Asians, it's usually home-grown, community learning centers. But for blacks, in general, it's nothing. With the exception of schools like Imani, the teaching in this country is done outside of what we think of as "school", and if you don't have the resources, you don't learn. And the bell curve is irrelevant.

My daughter took it last June and got a 660V, 560M, and 620W. She wanted to take it again but this time she just worked on verbal since that's her forte (and our entire family sucks at math so our expectations are low in that area!).

I got her a CD for $29 and she practiced a few of the verbal sections, then took the test again in December. Her verbal score went up 100 points to 760, her math even went up 10 to 570, but her writing went down to a 570.

As it turns out, she realized they weren't going to count the writing section this year anyway, so she did the sentence corrections but on the essay she wrote 3 sentences, then wrote "this is stupid" on the test. AND she still got a 570, a difference of only 50 points! Her essay score went from an 8 to a 3, but it should've been a 0 or a 1 at the most, IMO.

My son got a 1570, missed 1 math question and 2 language questions, and he is only a junior so he has another chance or 2 for a perfect score. He took all 3 sections but even his high school ignores the essay part when they report test scores. He goes to a public high school in an area where the parents are mostly college graduates, successful and care about their children's education. If you keep an eye on the teachers they will do a decent job.

Just throw more and more money at the schools and towards the teachers unions.
You sure speak for me . Our senior classes have had about 20% of the class "drop out " and not graduate the last two years. We are the second highest cost per student school district in the state. If money could buy students education we would have more graduating.

Until the average person realizes that the majority of the problems with schools are created by politicians trying to make parents happy we will not get the schools we need. This is the common complaint of the teachers I know. There is no plan. Teachers have very little control over what they teach, the overall plan is created by bureaucrat's and stuffed down the teachers throats. No child left behind is another Bush Kennedy immigration reform plan, a total disaster. Schools that are very good become at risk and need remediation when there test scores drop a few points. The politicians have forgotten that you can't control the raw material in education the students. Many start Kindergarten as blank slates with no background except for another gov't program Head Start which is of the quality expected from "Big Brother", long on welfare for the supposed instructors (usually not qualified teachers but welfare mothers) and short on instruction.It is easy to blame the teachers. The real problem, in most cases, lies with the parents, unions and politicians.

"Flunky public school teachers, that do NOTHING ALL YEAR but "teach to a test" -- whatever that means!"

I wouldn't call all public school teachers Flunkies, but even the good ones defend the broken system, and it is broken!

Teach to the test means you are going to acquaint your students as best you can with the kinds of questions they will likely encounter. You may administer practice tests to set up the testing conditions. You may find a copy of last year's test and administer that...In our school this is not a teacher-driven approach, it comes (through strong suggestion) from the administration. It is bogus. It is the antithesis of education. Most of the teachers that have been around for a while don't like it, and most of the new teachers don't know it ought to be any other way.

After my first day of teaching in the public school system I knew that my children would never go there. I have seen some really strong students made weak because they are surrounded by mediocrity. I have seen weak students given inflated grades simply because the grade distribution needed to be more equal. I have seen students doing nothing (NOTHING) given a passing grade. Public schools are being transformed into glorified (probably not the right word, now that I see it being used in a sentence with the words "public" and "school")...glorified child-care facilities. While I understand the absolute disdain many here have for the public schools, I have to say that teaching and learning can still occur but only by virtue of overcoming some monumental obstacles. The job requires an incredible expenditure of energy just to counter some of the things going on in the lives of students that reinforce the notion that school is a joke. The victories are small (and far too infrequent), but the potential for the joy that comes with those victories is irreplaceable. I'm still enjoying the challenge of overcoming administrators, edu-mah-cators, bureaucrats, activists, and poor students (though there are days...) These kids are going somewhere (school, Wal-Mart, jail, etc.), and we'd better figure out where we want them to go.
What we need to do is ask the liberals for the keys to the front door, thank them for, well, for all the time they spent "trying" (we can arrest them later on charges of destroying countless millions of lives, let's just get them out the door first) and then re-define a public education in America that will emphasize: commitment to learning, training in technology, training in math and science, and, most of all, training in American-ism--what it means to be an American.

LibLieSlayer: Couldn't they administer last years test and compare scores? That would eliminate or convict the changes made to this years test. I tend to think the new one is more accurate. Reading comprehension can't be taught by Kaplan in two weeks, if you haven't already spent years in school mastering the skill.

Kaplan:

I would love to get into a time machine and go back to 1960 and give this new SAT to high-school students back then. I suspect that they would do much better than today's students

Sez I:It's not possible to aminister the new test to the kids of 1960, but it surely should be possible to administer the test of 1960 to the kids of today to find out how they do on it. Only trouble is, the old test was probably not as good as the new one is - more number-crunching without calculators, and less precalc/calculus. More vocabulary (which can be crammed for) and less reading comprehension, which cannot be crammed for. So kids of today would likely ace the vocabulary on the old tests, and look better on verbal than they should - but, even if they have better math comprehension, do badly on the number crunching sans calculator.

So, if your public school students refuse to learn and do their homework, I take it you fail them before they get passed on to the next grade?

I am suprised there are no replies. I have seen what you are saying in action.

One of the first things I found out is the teach will not stand over your kid and force them to do work by sitting them in the corner or some other punishment.

They just carry on, then the kids becomes disruptive because they are bored. I dont blame the teachers. Its the system and band aids will not rebuild it.