Ex-Education Chief Calls Failure to Boost SAT Scores ‘Worst News in Long Time’

Former Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell today called the high school class of 1986’s failure to improve on its predecessors’ Scholastic Aptitude Test scores “the worst news we’ve had in education in a long time.”

“The entire nation ought to feel bad about it,” Bell said in a telephone interview. “What’s wrong with us? If you see how far down we’ve gone, we ought to be jumping up now.”

On Monday, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett took the news calmly, saying he had predicted last February that a surge like last year’s was unlikely.

“Clearly, the education excellence movement has been having an effect, and we’re holding the ground we’ve gained,” he said.

Now 5 Points Behind

Two years ago President Reagan challenged students and educators to try to regain, by 1990, half the points lost in the long SAT score decline. To do so, scores need to climb seven points a year. The average score was two points ahead of that pace last year but now is five points behind.

Bell, who was Reagan’s first education secretary, commissioned “A Nation At Risk,” the caustic 1983 report that is widely credited with sparking the national school reform movement. Bell, now an education professor at the University of Utah, said today that he had felt “so darn cocky” after SAT scores jumped a record nine points last year that “I really felt sad about” the latest results.

But other prominent educators said they are surprised, but not particularly worried, about the standstill.

“Mother Nature . . . doesn’t distribute talent equally each year,” Scott Thomson, executive director of the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals, said. “Every principal knows that. It’s possible that this year is not a winner overall.”

More Took Test

Thomson and other educators also pointed out that 23,383 more high school seniors took the SAT during the 1985-86 year at a time when the number of 17- and 18-year-olds is dropping.

The 1 million seniors--who like the class of 1985 scored 906 (431 verbal, 476 math) on the SAT scale of 400 to 1,600--represented more than 40% of their senior class, according to the College Board. A few years ago, only a third of seniors took the SAT.

“I wouldn’t overreact,” said California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who added that he had expected a two- or three-point rise in the SAT scores after last year’s nine-point jump. “I think things are still moving forward.”

SAT scores plunged from a high of 980 in 1963 to lows of 890 in both 1980 and 1981. They gained 16 points in the next three years.