SAT reading test scores hit 40 year low

[Bixbyte]

SAT reading scores for graduating high school seniors this year reached a four-decade low as the number and diversity of students taking the college admissions tests hit an all-time high, the College Board reported Monday.

The average reading score for the Class of 2012 was 496, down one point from the previous year and 34 points since 1972.


SAT reading scores hit a four-decade low - The Washington Post

[OldMama]

The kids who are taking the SATs now are a vastly different group from the kids who took it 40 years ago (roughly when I took them). I went to a suburban Catholic high school. I would bet that less than half of my class of 450 took the test. My middle brothers and sister never took it nor did any of their friends and that would have been about 40 years ago. Now high schools push just about everyone to take the test. I taught in a number of high schools and I was always astounded at who took the SATs. Many, many of these kids were never going to go to college. Heck, many were in vocational programs and never intended from 9th grade to go to college. In some city schools, every child takes the PSAT in 9th and 10th grade as practice before taking it for real in 11th grade. I'm sure this accounts for a great deal of the variance, although I'm just as sure that too much TV and computer and too little reading has taken its toll.

[OffenseTaken]

There are not only more kids taking the SAT than ever, but more and more of them are coming from households where English isn't ordinarily spoken. Even if their speaking and listening are perfectly good for getting by in an American high school, they're not going to have books written in English at home, and they won't have watched PBS with their parents when growing up. They're not going to know the meaning of words like "inchoate" or "churlish" or "spendthrift."

Notice that the math score hasn't dropped: a major cause, perhaps the leading cause, of this is the increasing number of Asian kids who take the test, and kick ass on the math section (of course) but suck on the verbal and writing sections. I'm surprised the verbal score hasn't dropped even further.

[OldMama]

Another good point. Absolutely true.

[FrankStar]

Idk y
lol
l8er!

[rojnish]

I'm surprised the verbal score hasn't dropped even further.

Let's not forget that they "re-centered" the test about 15 years ago, so a 496 now is equivalent to about a 420 15 years ago. I believe it was because while 1000 was supposed to be the average score (for both verbal and math sections combined) the average score was figuring to be about 900. Did the test get harder? Did the students get less apt? Or, as an earlier post said, are kids who have no real reason to take the test dragging the average down? Why take the test if you have, and have never had, an interest in going to college? So some lawyered up parent can't sue the school when their kid ends up in jail by saying 'he was never even given the opportunity to consider college by his high school, so I'm entitled to some money." Or some bullcrap like that.

[OffenseTaken]

Idk y
lol
l8er!

The Straight Dope: What does "OK" stand for?:

The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes."

Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."

[OldMama]

Education in this country is supposed to be the great equalizer. It's not that way everywhere. Other countries track students into non-college programs even before high school so that only students likely to get into college take the college track program. Britain does it, Germany does it. We don't. Schools here want to believe that everyone can go to college. That's a ridiculous notion. Worse than ridiculous, it's dangerous. It fails to provide students with skills necessary to get a job without a collegel degree. Our vocational programs are limited to just a few schools. Meanwhile kids with no prayer of attending college are taking the SAT. I believe everyone has an equal right to an education but not everyone is capable or has the interest in an academic program and college after high school. We need to serve those kids better.

[2happy4u]

A few more billion will fix it

[OffenseTaken]

Education in this country is supposed to be the great equalizer. It's not that way everywhere. Other countries track students into non-college programs even before high school so that only students likely to get into college take the college track program. Britain does it, Germany does it. We don't. Schools here want to believe that everyone can go to college. That's a ridiculous notion. Worse than ridiculous, it's dangerous. It fails to provide students with skills necessary to get a job without a collegel degree. Our vocational programs are limited to just a few schools. Meanwhile kids with no prayer of attending college are taking the SAT. I believe everyone has an equal right to an education but not everyone is capable or has the interest in an academic program and college after high school. We need to serve those kids better.

I used to work as a volunteer at a primary school in a city in Holland. One of the teachers, while making a point about the students' long-term goals, said to me: "Keep in mind, these kids aren't going to university when they're through with VMBO [their high school, roughly]. They're going to trade schools." When I first heard this, I thought it was brutally harsh, perhaps even an abdication of her responsibility: how can she just give up on kids like that?, I thought. Naïvely.

Here's the sad part: they make more of an effort there to give kids who aren't intended for university* a theoretical, liberal-arts education than we do here. Did I mention that part of my duties as a volunteer was to serve on the prize jury for the films the kids had made in their cinema class? Meanwhile in Philadelphia schools, 17-year-olds are still rehearsing the most basic of tasks, like retrieving their workbook from the front of the classroom without breaking out in a fight, yet we still keep up this pretense that getting them into college is our only goal, and anything short of that is failure. It's ****ing madness.


*While most primary-school pupils are put on the path to trade school by default, they can always be recommended for a university track by their teachers—or, with some paperwork, by their mothers and fathers.

[2happy4u]

pick up and develop a good trade, you'll never need food stamps.

[Bixbyte]

pick up and develop a good trade, you'll never need food stamps.

What has happened "To get a good job, get a good education" ?
Our education system is whacked.
People in India with $450 Masters Degrees that they can not matriculate to the USA are
hired by large Corporations, earn $6 hour and steal our Jobs in the USA.
Nurses in India are paid $160 month. They can work here and make good money as medical assistants.
They have on the job work experience working in India hospitals as RNs.
But, their degrees are not accepted as nurses in the USA.
They learned their Nurse Trades in India.
Take your jobs away.
Great system invented by the politicians to exploit free trade for big business.

It's a FREE country for the RICH.

[MariusPontmercy]

...Meanwhile in Philadelphia schools, 17-year-olds are still rehearsing the most basic of tasks, like retrieving their workbook from the front of the classroom without breaking out in a fight...

“`Eh Dawg! `Eh!” Earl the Snake White called out after a rival member of the 19th Street Gangsters, General Cornrow Wallace, made minor contact with his shoes.

“`Eh …`eh Dawg `Eh! You stepped on my sneaker man!?!”

The Snake knew then he would have to fight him…

[OffenseTaken]

pick up and develop a good trade, you'll never need food stamps.

Really? My stepbrother is a master carpenter who was pushing six figures in the mid-2000's. He's working in a drive-thru now. If he's not getting food stamps, he sure as hell could use them.

Let's face it: there's no occupation out there, blue–collar or white–collar, that's gonna give you the stability in life that our fathers and grandfathers had. The case for education, whether vocational or academic, used to be that it was your ticket to success. Now it's "you're probably ****ed with it, but you're definitely ****ed without it."

“`Eh Dawg! `Eh!” Earl the Snake White called out after a rival member of the 19th Street Gangsters, General Cornrow Wallace, made minor contact with his shoes.

“`Eh …`eh Dawg `Eh! You stepped on my sneaker man!?!”

The Snake knew then he would have to fight him…

"Wasting no time, the crew commenced stomping on people's sneakers, to let them know just who ran the projects." HAHA

I wish I'd been exaggerating about workbook retrieval being a significant challenge, but it goes down like that not infrequently.