Explanations vary for why scores on SAT fell

A drop in national average scores on the SAT college entrance exam for the second year in a row has renewed debate in testing circles about whether it’s the SAT that has changed, or the students.

Whatever the reasons, the downward movement continues.

This year’s decline is less dramatic than last year’s seven-point drop in combined math and critical reading scores. The combined score for the high school graduating class of 2007 slipped four points in those sections – three in math and one in the critical reading, to 515 and 502, respectively. Scores on the writing sections were down three points, to 494, from last year, when that section was administered for the first time. The maximum score on each section is 800.

Scores for Idaho students dropped two points for reading and six points for math, while Washington students fared slightly better with a one-point and three-point decline, respectively.

The College Board, the nonprofit group that owns the test, downplayed the declines in a report last week, noting that math scores have continued to climb over the past 20 years and that critical reading scores have remained “essentially flat” over the years, even with some changes in the test design.

College Board officials attributed this year’s declines mostly to the ever-evolving population of test-takers.

Nearly 1.5 million 2007 high school graduates took the test, up 1.9 percent from the previous year. Increases in the number of test takers who are minorities, come from low-income families or are among the first generation in their families to plan for college make this year’s class the largest and most diverse on record, College Board president Gaston Caperton said.

“The larger the population you get to take an examination, it obviously knocks down the scores,” he said.

Maine, for example, recently became the first state to require students to take the SAT to meet assessment requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law. This year, the number of test takers increased by 41 percent, and scores fell by more than 30 points in each section.

Seppy Basili, senior vice president for Kaplan Inc., a test-prep company, says the score drops are negligible. More important, he says, the increased share of students who historically might not have planned for college is “putting a face on the future.”

But testing critic Robert Schaeffer suggests the drops have more to do with the introduction of a revised SAT two years ago. Section scores had been climbing steadily in recent years, even as the test-taking population grew more diverse, he says. Scores reversed themselves only after a new version of the SAT was introduced. It is longer and includes an essay and higher-level math questions, among other changes.

“The College Board failed to keep its promise that the revised SAT would remain a consistent measuring tool,” says Schaeffer, education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a nonprofit group based in Cambridge, Mass.

He also notes that scores on the rival ACT exam, which Colorado and Illinois require of all students, showed a slight increase for the class of 2007, despite a record number of test takers.

College Board vice president Laurence Bunin said analysts are “not seeing evidence” that the new test does not equate with the previous version. Rather, Caperton says, the increased diversity of test takers “tells us that parents and children increasingly see the value of a college education in these competitive times.”