Verbal SAT Scores Slip Again in 1990 : Education: Three-point drop nationwide brings a call for less television and more reading. Average math scores remain unchanged.

Prompting a call for students to read more and watch rock videos less, national average scores of high school seniors in the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test declined slightly in 1990, for the fourth year in a row. Meanwhile, the average math score did not change.

The two main parts of the SAT are both scored on a scale of 200 to 800. This year’s three-point drop in verbal SAT scores, to 424, puts that average back to its lowest in two decades, compared to 463 in 1969. The 476 average in math has not changed over four years and remains 17 points below the 1969 average, although it is 10 points better than 1980, which had the worst average in 20 years.

California’s 1990 averages on the nation’s most widely used college admissions examination were 419 in verbal, down three points from last year, and 484 in math, unchanged from 1989.

“Disturbing but not particularly surprising,” was the way Donald M. Steward, president of the College Board, which sponsors the SAT, described the 1990 national verbal scores. In a statement accompanying the scores’ release Monday, Stewart referred to a recent study that showed high school seniors on average spend at least three hours a day watching television and read 10 or fewer pages of any written material.

“Students must pay less attention to video games and music videos and begin to read more,” Stewart declared, urging parents and educators to reinforce his plea. “Reading is in danger of becoming a lost art among too many American students--and that would be a national tragedy.”

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig also said the scores prove that high school students are not reading and writing enough. But Honig saw encouraging signs in California. “When you take in account the demographic shift, we are outpacing the nation,” he said.

The percentage of nonwhites among SAT-takers this year in California was 49%, up from 35% in 1984 and sharply higher than this year’s national nonwhite representation of 27%. Although they have increased their scores significantly in the last 15 years, minority groups generally do worse on the SAT than Anglos, except for Asian-Americans on math.

Yet despite that ethnic representation, California students were only five points below the national verbal average. Californians scored eight points above the national math average, boosted partly by the Asian representation--22% of California SAT-takers, compared to 8% nationally.

Critics allege that biases built into the test cause score gaps between men and women and between Anglos and most minorities. But the College Board says those differences are caused by educational and economic backgrounds of students and their parents.

The College Board is studying possible changes to make the SAT more relevant to classroom learning and less coachable. Among those proposals are requiring students to write an essay and answer some math questions without the hints from multiple-choice answers. Some experts say those reforms could boost women’s scores, but advocates for Latinos and Asians say an essay could hurt immigrants for whom English is a second language.

In the SAT verbal section this year, high school senior boys averaged 429, down five points from last year, compared to 419 by girls, down two. In math, boys averaged 499, down one point, while girls achieved 455, up one point.

The 1990 SAT averages of major ethnic groups nationally were:

Anglos. 442 in verbal, down 4 points from 1989 and down 9 since 1976, when test scores by ethnic groups were first available; 491 in math, unchanged from 1989 and down 2 since 1976.

African Americans. 352 verbal, up 1 from 1989, up 20 since 1976; 385 math, down 1 from 1989, up 31 since 1976.

Mexican-Americans. 380 verbal, down 1 from 1989, up 19 since 1976; 429 math, down 1 from 1989, up 19 since 1976.

Asian-Americans. 410 verbal, up 1 from 1989, down 4 since 1976; 528 math, up 3 from 1989, up 10 since 1976.