<p>Colleges Report Mystery Decline in SAT Scores</p>
<p>The key word in this article is "mystery" - the drop in scores is not attributed to test fatigue etc.</p>
<p>Am I right that the college board has never released the percentiles on the new test? I thought that info was supposed to be released in Oct., but as of now, I don't think that we know, for instance, what percentile of college bound seniors score a 2100.</p>
<p>From the NY Times:</p>
<p>"Many colleges are reporting that their applicants' average scores this year on the verbal and math sections of the exam fell significantly, some by more than 10 points. Usually, scores change glacially, a point or two a year.</p>
<p>Colleges and board officials are unsure of the reasons for the decline, and no one points to scoring errors. But the declines have created jitters and puzzlement. </p>
<p>Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said he noticed the decline last fall. "It was only four or five points," he said, "but it was too much of a shift to be a coincidence. I thought maybe we had just reached into a different pool of applicants."</p>
<p>He added that at a meeting of Ivy League admissions deans yesterday "there was general concurrence that SAT scores had dropped a nominal amount." </p>
<p>That trend is being reported elsewhere. The University of California saw a 15-point drop in average scores. At the University of Washington, the decline was 5 to 10 points.</p>
<p>The College Board says that it found a 4- or 5-point average drop based on scores through January, but that the decline could widen. "</p>
<p>The 2006 report will come out in August. </p>
<p>The 2005 report is available at </p>
<p>The cutoff seems to included the March 2005 test.</p>
<p>This is the official text regarding the drop in scores (was posted on CC a few days ago)</p>
<p>In addition, one might be interested in this excerpt:
[quote]
Glimpse of New SAT Results for March, May, and June
The next graduating class, the class of 2006, has begun taking a new SAT, the results of which will be reported in August of 2006. To date, three administrations of the new SAT have been offered, one each in March, May, and June, and nearly 1.4 million students have taken the new version of the SAT. Each essay was read, scored, and reported by two different professional readers (all high school or college teachers). Furthermore, 95 percent of the essays were read, scored, and reported within the 16-day scoring window as expected.</p>
<p>"The new SAT goes further than the old one in focusing on the twenty-first-century skills required for success in a more global economy," said Caperton. "The more advanced math, the greater focus on reading, and the new emphasis on writing will help promote the mastery of skills that our young people will need as we face increasing competition from other nations, including rapidly emerging ones. Developed reasoning skills and advanced literacy skills in both reading and writing are essential in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and digital."</p>
<p>Thorough analyses of performance on the new SAT cannot be accomplished until next year, when an entire cohort of students has taken the new SAT, and average scores for the first class of students to take the new SAT will be reported in August 2006. However, the College Board offered a glimpse of preliminary performance on the new SAT by examining the performance of test-takers who took the test in March, May, or June of 2005 and comparing those scores to the scores of students who took the test in the spring administrations in the past five years (see table below). Furthermore, because the sample of new SAT test-takers is predominantly juniors, the numbers referenced are based on test-takers who were juniors during these spring administrations. It should be noted that juniors who take the SAT for the first time in the spring of their junior year are typically highly motivated students who are not representative of the College-Bound Seniors cohort. Therefore, the averages in these tables are higher than the cohort averages that the College Board has reported for the past several years. </p>
<p>New SAT math and critical reading score means for the spring 2005 administrations are in line with SAT math and verbal means from previous years, and the upward trend in math that is seen in the cohort is also seen in this data. No historical data are available for the writing section because it is a new section, but the table does indicate that the writing mean is slightly below the reading mean for this group of students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Could it be more moist answer sheets?</p>
<p>It's time to do away with the SAT. It has lost all credibility at this juncture. People who can afford it hire expensive tutors, which right away taints the results. It's been "recentered." Then they add a ridiculous writing sample, which is meaningless, and which smart college administrations should ignore all together. I'm currently thinking of looking at a number of SAT optional schools for my rising sophomore son when the time comes. I hope more schools will be SAT-optional by the time he applies and I wouldn't be surprised if that will be the case.</p>
<p>Plus, since they've done away with analogies, which is the one thing which might really show intelligence, and added silly "reading comprehension" segments, which show not much except how interested the person happens to be in that reading exerpt, I say be done with you!</p>
<p><<<< "reading comprehension" segments, which show not much except how interested the person happens to be in that reading exerpt, <<<<</p>
<p>that really seems to be true.... my S does well in reading comprehension with the reading passages that he doesn't find boring. He always misses a few questions when answering questions for boring passages.</p>
<p>I, too, like that analogies. Analogies do indicate intelligence and logic.</p>
<p>Considering all the "help" students get on their college app essays, I think the new SAT writing section is a better indicator of whether the student can actually think and write a decent sentence/paragraph. No parents, no tutors, no English teachers---just the student. And with all the gpa inflation and the AP games, the SATs are still the equalizer.</p>
<p>I liked the analogies, but I was never very good at them (relatively to the top students). I would always get 16-18 out of 20, while the top kids in my class always got 20. However, I was doing analogies since 3rd grade (along with the other kids in my classes). In contrast, some people didn't see analogies until they took the SAT.</p>
<p>This is the program that my 3rd grade class (GT, and 4th/5th/6th) used:
<a href="http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com/elem.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.wordmasterschallenge.com/elem.htm</a>
The non GT classes didn't do them.</p>
<p>maryc "Considering all the "help" students get on their college app essays, I think the new SAT writing section is a better indicator of whether the student can actually think and write a decent sentence/paragraph. No parents, no tutors, no English teachers---just the student. And with all the gpa inflation and the AP games, the SATs are still the equalizer."</p>
<p>Mary, you make a great point. I believe that is why the writing/essay portion was put into place. When kids send in essays with their college aps, who knows who really wrote them!</p>
<p>Poor writing skills are a problem across this nation. When I taught school, kids would bring in essays that their parents had "proof read" yet there would still be glaring errors.</p>
<p>How many of us have received memos from work or letters from schools with awkward sentences, misspellings, wrong subject/verb agreement, etc. It is sad because you know that these letters have been "looked over" before being sent out (I'm not talking about a quick posting on a website or a quick email) Sometimes I want to mark them up with a red pen, put a grade on the top, and send them back.</p>
<p>That said, I do think that the SAT test is very long and exhausting.</p>
<p>A few observations:</p>
<p>
[quote]
In a memorandum to college admissions officials last month, a vice president of the College Board, James M. Montoya, said one possible explanation was that fewer students were taking the test more than once.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I am not sure how this would apply the UC schools since they take single sitting scores not mix and match scores. I guess it could apply if there is a reduced number of students taking the test.</p>
<p>Second, the test was changed from an "aptitude" test to an "achievement" test. Notably moving the Writing section from the SAT Subject Test section to the SAT Reasoning section. They also added a bit more advanced math to test knowledge instead of "aptitude". </p>
<p>How much of the change is due to this change? Do they have correlation numbers for SAT Reasoning scores and SAT Subject test scores so they could predict the change when they went from a limited number of students taking the Subjet tests to everyone taking the Reasoning tests?</p>
<p>In the past the high level distinction between the SAT and the ACT was that one was an aptitude test and the other was a test of broad cirriculum knowledge. That there is a difference between scores this year and last is not a surprise to me.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is time for another recentering. ;-)</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if the new SAT has predictive validity, that is, if scores correlate with college GPA (assuming grades are an accurate measure of achievement) or degree completion, but I guess it will be 4 years or so before they can address that.</p>
<p>Conyat, you make an extremely good point. I suppose we will just have to wait and see if, as Eagle79 commented, we will be subjected to another recentering or even a restructuring of the test. Xiggi's excerpted passage is fascinating and begs the question whether or not this test is a true measure of the basic educational skills needed in an increasingly digitial, interconnected, global world. Until these questions are satisfactorily addressed the SAT-s role as equalizer is itself put to the test.</p>
<p>I find both Maryc and JLauer comments about the SAT writing section intriguing. I assume both of them refer to the essay portion of the section in particular. As far as I can tell, this third "new" section of the test is little more than a reworking of the old SATII Subject (writing) exam which was required by most colleges and universities before the new SAT came on the scene. According to the CB blue book, most grammar errors, misspellings that would drive many English teachers to tear out their hair and whip out their red pencils, etc. do not play a significant role in the score. The essay is expected to be a rough draft. The student's ability to construct a logical argument and plan coherent and hopefully sophisticated paragraph development seems to be a key factor in scoring well. In order to get a good score in 25 minutes of frenzied writing most students need to prepare and study before they go into the exam. So, in the the context of the SAT, wouldn't the students who perform best on the test probably be among those who also spent the most time and care polishing and proof-reading their app. essays?</p>
<p>asteriskea quote: most grammar errors, misspellings that would drive many English teachers to tear out their hair and whip out their red pencils, etc. do not play a significant role in the score. The essay is expected to be a rough draft.</p>
<p>Yes... what more can be expected in 25 minutes? Plus, since extra paper is not given, a rewrite isn't even possible. </p>
<p>Altho the essay portion does not get graded for grammar, the writing portion of the test, does. Therefore, if a student does well in the essay (ex. gets an 11) but does poorly in the writing multi-choice portion, then a college may infer that the kid can form ideas but may not be very good at writing mechanics -- sub/verb agreement, spelling, tense, and so on.</p>
<p>Yes, I just wrote an awkward sentence on another thread, but I agree the new writing section is an opportunity to deal with applicants without all of the aids financially-endowed students enjoy now. Still, the playing field has not been leveled with the new version of the SATs because private schools do a bang-up job at teaching writing skills, and this does tend to support the notion that the best SAT compostion writers may be the best application essay writers if, and only if, the application essay is produced by the student without assistance. </p>
<p>I said yes in the sense that I agree that the scores on the old tests were inflated because of all the gaming that took place earlier, the test coaching and so forth. A new kind of test results in less fine-tuned preparation for it. (It probably means time has been spent on more meaningful pursuits.) </p>
<p>Still, and some of the other people posting here have noted this, information coming out of the secondary schools is even more suspect, more massaged, than the test scores.</p>
<p>A lie is to truth as black is to white
A untruth is to (------} as to moist is to wet
A negative is to positive as to north is to south
A Blue is to Red as to Democrates as to Republicans</p>
<p>Which most correct.
(I hated the analogies---too many greys and grays with new meanings everyday. For example: do you remember thongs for 10 cents. )</p>
<p>There are many colleges that are not using the writing section. Many feel it is not reflective of the type of writing required for a top college. UChicago, for example, does not use it, they rely instead on their "uncommon" essays. There are also concerns about how the samples are evaluated. A very creative one sentence response is unlikely to score well. There is some concern that length seems to trump content, but I do not know if there is actual data to back that up.</p>
<p>Do you think the ACT will be adopted by more colleges until CB gets their act together? (no pun intended) I would hate to think that our kids who are going through the seeming "beta test" years of the new SAT will be inordinately affected by this shift, with no supporting standardized test redundancies. Perhaps the AP results will be given more weight, in the absence of confidence in the SAT? I'd like to see what the colleges are doing to normalize the new SAT (other than basically removing the writing portion from official "calculations", as I've heard is done). Does anyone have any idea why certain schools prefer SAT over ACT, or vice versa? I know the trends of midwestern schools preferring ACT, coastal schools the SAT, etc. What is the reason for this, and is there a good reason for this difference?</p>
<p>Re: the new SAT Writing section and its validity....That writing section is a rough draft...period. Many many great writers do not have terrific first drafts. In the time allowed, there is little time to revise, edit, and make the piece better. As long as colleges understand that they are looking at a rough draft, then so be it. Personally, I think the additional time that students must now spend on the test is not worth the added subtest for writing. Perhaps the UC's will weigh in on this soon...I believe this initiative would not have taken place at all if the CB hadn't felt that the whole UC system was going to ditch the SAT without a writing section. AND regarding interest...my kid also writes better about topics for which she has interest, and...oh yes....knowledge. On this writing prompt there is no choice about the topic.</p>
<p>Thumper, that is a really good point. Why not have choices on the writing section.</p>