OK, they dumped the analogy questions ages ago, but for oldsters like myself, those are still the signature SAT questions…<\/p>\n
Inside Higher Ed<\/cite> has a piece today on the new SAT results<\/a>, which expresses concern over some declines:<\/p>\n Mean scores on the SAT fell this year by more than they have in decades. A five-point drop in critical reading, to 503, was the largest decline since 1975 and the two-point drop in mathematics, to 518, was the largest dip since 1978.<\/p>\n Gaps among racial and ethnic groups continued to be significant on the SAT, including the new writing test, for which the first mean scores were released at the College Board’s annual SAT briefing on Tuesday. The board also reported a small decline in the total number of people who took the test, and while board officials insisted at a news conference that the decline was across the board, they acknowledged later Tuesday that the board’s own data suggest that the decline appears to be among students from the lowest income families.<\/p>\n The percentage of SAT test takers with family incomes up to $30,000 was 19 percent for the high school class of 2006, down from 22 percent a year ago. The share of SAT test takers from families with incomes greater than $100,000 was 24 percent, up from 21 percent a year ago.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Sounds pretty bad, right?<\/p>\n Here’s the thing: Last year was the first year of the newest revision of the SAT, including the addition of a writing test. Frankly, I’m amazed the scores didn’t fall further.<\/p>\n Is this a real decline in student performance, or a blip due to the revisions? There’s really no way to say without more data, which will take a year or so to obtain. Really, you probably need two or three more years of tests before you could hope to say anything sensible. My guess is that the scores will probably come back up slightly, as students and teachers have a better idea what to expect from the new format, but I wouldn’t want to stake a large amount of money on it.<\/p>\n Either way, it would be really silly to declare the imminent fall of the sky at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OK, they dumped the analogy questions ages ago, but for oldsters like myself, those are still the signature SAT questions… Inside Higher Ed has a piece today on the new SAT results, which expresses concern over some declines: Mean scores on the SAT fell this year by more than they have in decades. A five-point… Continue reading Apples : Oranges :: New SAT : Old SAT<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n