80% of US High Schools have no National Merit Semifinalist this year

[epiphany]

<p>^ Yep. ~10 characters.</p>

[Northstarmom]

<p>I loved analogies, too, and that was the section that younger S had done best on. I was surprised when his SAT score increased when analogies was dropped.</p>

[taxguy]

<p>Yup, I really liked the analogies too. They were the most fun part of the CR portion of the test and probably the easiest for me.</p>

[MiamiDAP]

<p>My advice is to develop personal strategy to make prep efficient. For exmplae, D prepped on for math section (her easy subject). Her personal assessment was: there is not way to improve reading speed/comprehention - accept that it will be the worst score on test, compensate with much higher scores in other sections, no need to practice Reading (always her lowest score on all tests, got 28 on ACT); English section for her was just using common sense (did not practice, did not study, looked at few practice questions, got 35); science on ACT does not reguire specific science knowledge, it is another reading section with more time allocated to it, no need to prep. Math happened to be the only one that made sense for her to refresh since most of it was from earlier math classes, not calc. Her personal strategy has worked for her better than she estimated. She decided that she got enough score after first try and cancelled second one. I believe that personalized program is the best way to go.</p>

[garland]

<p>count me as another fan of the analogies. this was the section all my family did best on. I’m glad my kids finished their test-taking days before they changed it.</p>

[Queen_s_Mom]

<p>I’m with bovartine. I could ace a multiple choice standardized test in almost any subject, even if I knew very little about it. I just have that talent. Unfortunately, the only thing that’s good for is taking standardized tests-never actually helped me in real life.</p>

[PaperChaserPop]

<p>Unless explicitly stated, a generalization allows for exceptions!</p>

<p>Many folks were using examples of themselves or their kids either in support of making a generalization or to counter another poster’s generalization. One or two cases do not make up a trend or provide enough data points for any statistical analysis, let alone coming up with or overturning generalizations. They may trigger further investigation to see if these singularities reflect something that may be the norm, but by themselves, they don’t really mean much, unless they are used to counter a categorical assertion.</p>

[momofthreeboys]

<p>Of course, but all we can can do is generalize about why there aren’t more NMS in the absence of the ability to analyze available data. In general you can’t turn a 160 PSAT score into a NMS simply from prep, but if you are a student that could come close, you may (or maynot) be able to push yourself over the cut-off with some general advising on how best to master the test.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>^^^^Well, as far as the value of one-on-one multi day structured tutoring I am not just using myself as an example. I am using my experience from the 100 plus students I tutored, plus the statistics from the very large, established, tutoring company I worked for. </p>

<p>One day test prep, which is what a lot of these students get, is worthless.</p>

<p>And if the educated, involved parents who consistenly pay for tutoring and prep didn’t believe it worked, it wouldn’t be such a big industry. These prep courses thrive primarily based on word of mouth. If it was worthless, nobody would do it.</p>

[PaperChaserPop]

<p>

@atomom

I’d say native intelligence (genetic), parents’ education level/high expectations, type of school that values academic achievement, test prep.

</p>

<p>Is there a dominant factor in your list? Also, these factors are not really independent of each other. For example, parent’s high expectation may cause the family to select the school that values academic achievement and to pay for the test prep.</p>

<p>

@bovertine

This is one short multiple choice test taken on one day by a percentage of students in the country. This is what you’re going to use to evaluate the state of the US educational system?

</p>

<p>Whether we like it or not, many educators at the state and the federal level who are in charge of the system are using standardized tests to measure grade proficiency in many disciplines. Proficiency tests given at various grade levels are used in many states to determine school and student academic performance. Some states even use them for graduation requirements. Some state college systems use the results of the its state proficiency tests to determine in-state scholarships. So yes, in some respect, multiple choice tests are being used to evaluate the state of education system.</p>

<p>

@justmytwocents

Perhaps even more interesting is that there are reportedly 582 high schools in Mississippi, and only 50 of them had a semifinalist. That’s less than 10 percent - and many of that 50 only had one designee to boot.

</p>

<p>Thanks for the stats on MS – justmytwocents. The percentage in the thread title only accounts for the participating schools. If we take all high schools into consideration, then we are at about 11% nationally, very close to what you see in your state.</p>

<p>

@ProxGC

I wonder how many high schools had NM scholars; did the OP ask this question of NM?

</p>

<p>No. I don’t have this data or the data on the commended.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>I do not necessarily bow down and kowtow to an educator simply because they run the system. I did not say these tests had no value, but I suspect the reason they are used is logistic, not because they are necessarily the best means of standard evaluation. It is a lot easier to run a scantron through a machine than to hand grade essays and calculations.</p>

<p>I also suspect that parents whose children do well on these tests tend to like them a lot more than parents whose children don’t do so well.</p>

[PaperChaserPop]

<p>

@MomLive

There is certainly no good reason that my son’s class of 60 had 10 NMSF and the entire county of 15 HS with 5,000 seniors only had 23 in total. My son’s school doesn’t prep the kids. They do take the PSAT in the 9th and 10th grade as practice, but still, I would not expect to see such a large discrepancy…Our school is very small (300 kids in the HS)

</p>

<p>How about the other schools in your county? Are they also small schools? Do they also get their 9th & 10th graders to take the test? Does your school have more than its share of the wealthy kids in your county?</p>

<p>

@Northstarmom

The predictors of how kids do on the PSAT/SAT is: socioeconomic status and whether the kids have taken AP and other rigorous courses, and the quality of those AP courses.

@taxguy

Getting a high GPA is a function of academic ability PLUS work ethic. Generally, kids that study hard, have good study skills, and strong memories can get a good GPA, assuming that they have decent academic skills to begin with. Tests in high school merely require an understanding of what was taught.

</p>

<p>Is socioeconomic status also a predictor of GPA? If not, why not? It seems logical to expect some correlation. I know a lot of kids have been getting paid private tutoring for their school subjects. In general, people with better resources to support their pursuit will be in a better position to beat their less resourceful competitions.</p>

[PaperChaserPop]

<p>

@taxguy

The SAT is a VERY different animal. It requires kids to think outside the box and to master types of questions that really weren’t covered in high school. Moreover, the questions were not straightforward. Many were designed to be tricky.

</p>

<p>It depends on the high school and the teacher. Some core curriculum teachers do write up tests that are “tricky”. There are tricky in a good way – to test whether the students really understand and can apply what they learned in non-trivial ways. It takes time and energy to design these “tricky” tests, and therefore I’m not surprised most teachers don’t have them. The training is also available at math team and chess clubs of many schools. </p>

<p>The students who have these benefits are trained to not take the calm sea for granted and be on the lookout for undertow. It is also not uncommon that these benefits are usually limited to those kids who are taking high level classes at these schools. I suspect this may partially explain why the star kids at some schools tend to score much higher than their peers at other schools on the PSAT/SAT.</p>

[epiphany]

<p>

I also suspect that parents whose children do well on these tests tend to like them a lot more than parents whose children don’t do so well.

</p>

<p>Wrong. I do not like poor test design. Never have, never will. The test should be aligned to something significant. If they want to measure whether flipping back and forth every 20-25 minutes between math and verbal can be done, just state that you’re measuring that. That actually doesn’t even assess “grade proficiency” or whether the student “did well” in high school. And it most certainly does not address what you will be expected to do in college – which is quite the opposite – namely, whether you can sustain attention and sustain understanding and express your understanding of that in more than sound-bites, but with depth, development, and style. </p>

<p>The SAT measures whether you can take certain kinds of tests well, assuming (also) that you were sufficiently instructed in the content (skills) measured by the test. That’s all it measures.</p>

<p>The CR section disappoints. And my D nailed it twice in a row with an 800, no test prep.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>^^^ I agree with you 100%, so I hope you’re not arguing with my overall premise. </p>

<p>But I suspect your attitude about the validity of the exam is the exception, not the rule among parents of high scoring students. That’s an anecdotal opinion, but that’s not my main point anyway.</p>

[Northstarmom]

<p>“Is socioeconomic status also a predictor of GPA? If not, why not? It seems logical to expect some correlation. I know a lot of kids have been getting paid private tutoring for their school subjects.”</p>

<p>I imagine that there is some correlation between SES and gpa. I imagine that it’s for the reason that you suggest and it’s also because in general, higher SES people have higher education than do those with low SES.</p>

<p>Still, hard work does account for lots when it comes to gpa. My sons grew up in two parent, upper middle class homes, and had access to tutoring, etc., but still didn’t have high gpas. Even with tutoring, counseling, helpful, educated parents, my kids still were not inspired to work up to their abilities. I know plenty of kids --particularly boys – from similar backgrounds who also had mediocre grades.</p>

<p>I also know very hard working students from uneducated background who had excellent grades despite not having access to the support and resources that my kids did. My sons’ SAT scores were much higher than those of such students, but gpa is a far better indication of college performance than are test scores. Consequently, my older S flunked out of college while many hard working, high h.s. gpa students with much lower test scores graduated with honors from similar and even harder colleges than S flunked out of.</p>

[PaperChaserPop]

<p>Epiphany – thanks for the many fine posts here. </p>

<p>

The CR section disappoints. And my D nailed it twice in a row with an 800, no test prep.

</p>

<p>Congrats to your D!</p>

<p>Are you saying you are disappointed with the CR section unless your D scores less than perfect? </p>

<p>Maybe she will still get an 800 if they double the reading passage length and make the questions twice as hard. Give her and yourself credit for her achievement :).</p>

<p>

Deep thinkers can be very frustrated by the SAT. Mulling over in one’s mind is not an option. Not only are the segments short, but one is essentially penalized for sustaining a thought. (“No wait, we’re doing math now; No wait, we’re immediately doing reading again; whoops, back to math.”) The latter ability may reveal a certain kind of “discipline,” superficially, but it is not the kind of discpline very applicable to college-level learning, as it does not mimic it, even in microcosm.

</p>

<p>I agree deep thinkers don’t find much joy with SAT’s, but I don’t see how the test penalizes students for sustaining a thought. You don’t actually do one math problem and then switch to a reading exercise on the next and back to math again. You finish a whole section, pens down, booklet closed, before moving on to the next section.</p>

<p>

There are not even many multiple-choice tests in a reputable 4-year college, and most certainly not many at HYPSM and similar illustrious institutions over which so much angst is spent, relative to standardized tests and who “qualifies” to be admitted to and succeed at such illustrious institutions.

</p>

<p>PSAT and SAT are aptitude tests. It is debatable whether the results are good indicators of basic aptitude for college level study. Once in college, hopefully our kids won’t be tested on aptitude again ;).</p>

<p>

it most certainly does not address what you will be expected to do in college – which is quite the opposite – namely, whether you can sustain attention and sustain understanding and express your understanding of that in more than sound-bites, but with depth, development, and style.

</p>

<p>I agree. You have a great point here. The ability to sustain attention and thought is extremely valuable not just for college learning, but for almost all intellectual endeavors. PSAT and SAT are not designed to ascertain this ability. The best indicator may be the student’s AP level class grades and AP scores.</p>

[epiphany]

<p>

Are you saying you are disappointed with the CR section unless your D scores less than perfect?

</p>

<p>How you possibly infer that from my post? My post directly followed a comment from another poster, which postulated that those who dislike the SAT must therefore have scored poorly or have S/D’s who score poorly. </p>

<p>Please try to follow the logical sequence here. The poster I was in conversation with got it. Why didn’t you?</p>

[epiphany]

<p>

I don’t see how the test penalizes students for sustaining a thought. You don’t actually do one math problem and then switch to a reading exercise on the next and back to math again. You finish a whole section, pens down, booklet closed, before moving on to the next section.

</p>

<p>No. You do a few math problems, then switch, with teeny tiny breaks between sections. My point still holds.</p>

[momofthreeboys]

<p>I do tend to agree with you Northstarmom. It’s part genetics and part socio-economic. Two of my kids, my husband and I have very similar IQs, I did far better GPA wise than my husband and my boys. They just weren’t “into” high school. I went to high school with my husband so I can speak knowledgeably about him as a teenager. My third boy has a slightly higher IQ but also has more of my personality and drive to do every single thing requested by the teacher and every single extra credit point…it’s almost a game for him and his GPA reflects that. Higher socio-economic families have the ability and access to move their students to different schools, hire tutors, engage in test prep and in general have the potential to “move the mark” with their children and some will successfully manage to do just that. Educational testing is nothing new, remember the Iowa Basics of the 60s - the emphasis is slightly changed from a tool to “sort” to a tool to “measure and validate.” I tend to side with the type of tests that measure what has been learned as perhaps a stronger tool than one that is more abstract.</p>