Area students’ SAT scores above average

The College Board released the final set of old-school SAT scores Tuesday, marking the end of a testing era that measured only verbal and math skills.

Next year, perfect 1600 scores – comprising scores of 800 each in verbal and math sections – will give way to new SAT tests that add writing and critical reading sections.

The new perfect score will be a 2,400.

That change comes just as Spokane Public School students seem to have mastered the current form.

Spokane Public Schools, the state’s third-largest district, handily beat the state average and scored its highest numbers ever last school year. Spokane Public Schools’ average verbal score was 538, up five points from the previous year’s test. The average math score was 536, up four points.

“Overall, the trend has been ever increasing,” said Nancy Stowell, a Spokane Public Schools associate superintendent. She credits the numbers to teachers who take the SAT preparation work very seriously.

“It’ll be really interesting to see what happens when they change the format,” Stowell said.

Typically, only college-bound students take the SAT, which is administered by the College Board, a national nonprofit organization. Scores play a role in the admissions process at about 80 percent of the nation’s colleges and universities without open admissions policies.

Stowell believes that multiple tests help schools evaluate student progress.

“No single measure gives us enough information,” Stowell said. Nationwide, 1.4 million students took the test during the last school year, including 34,950 Washington students who were mostly female. Men made up 46 percent of test takers in the state.

Washington’s SAT average scores were 528 verbal, 531 math. National averages were lower, with 508 verbal, 518 math.

Central Valley School District, which has been very strong in math, saw a slight dip in verbal scores. Scores were 522 verbal, down from 534; and 540 math, up two points.

“We tend to see fluctuations,” said Bill Ash, Central Valley School District assessment coordinator. The percentage of students who took the test also dropped to 47 percent from 55 percent and no one’s sure why. It could be increased college requirements and costs that led more students to avoid the traditional four-year college route, Ash said.

At West Valley High School, scores were 519 verbal, 539 math.

At East Valley High School, scores were 478 verbal, 489 math.

In the Mead School District, the scores were 524 verbal, 545 math.

Numbers for other school districts are available from the districts.

In Idaho, students also tested higher than the national average in both math and verbal. Math scores for the state were 539, down a point from the previous year. The score on the verbal portion of the test stayed the same, at 540.

“While the test scores speak well for students, we try not to make a big deal of it,” said Allison Westfall, spokeswoman for the Idaho state Department of Education.

Lakeland Assistant Superintendent Ron Schmidt said the scores are still useful.

“If our kids were doing poorly, we would want to be looking at what we were doing,” Schmidt said.

Students from the high school class of 2005 may choose to retake the old SAT test in the coming months. Then, truly, a new SAT era begins.