S.D. County High School Seniors Gain in SAT Scores

San Diego County high school seniors made the largest one-year gain in Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores in a decade, outpacing smaller gains on the state and national levels.

The improvement in local and national average scores halts at least temporarily a worrisome decline in the college-entrance examination that has been blamed on television, immigration and inadequate education.

After dropping for two straight years, county scores on the verbal section of the 2 1/2-hour multiple choice test given last spring rose four points to 425. The statewide verbal score rose one point to 416 and the national one point to 423.

In math, the county score climbed three points to 492, the statewide two points to 484 and the national two points to 476. The national math score had declined last year for the first time in a decade.

Each section of the SAT is graded on a scale from 200 to 800 points.

However, experts cautioned against bragging too much about the latest scores, which remain far below those of the previous generation of students and also reflect sharp differences among ethnic and income groups.

San Diego city schools Supt. Tom Payzant, who is a trustee of the College Board, the New York-based organization that sponsors the SAT, expressed pleasure Wednesday at improved verbal scores in particular but warned that an upward trend depends on students doing more reading and writing.

“The SAT scores really represent an assessment of what a student has accumulated over time,” Payzant said. “You can’t sustain these gains with a crash course, but only with doing a lot of writing, with reading good literature, with learning how to analyze problems, all over a long period of time.”

While conceding that “one or two points may not seem like much,” Donald M. Stewart, president of the College Board, said he hoped the 1992 results “start an upward trend that puts the score declines of the 1980s behind us.” Educational reforms and tougher high school classes obviously would help, Stewart said.

Yet, as they did last year, SAT officials warned of a gulf between an educational elite and the rest of American students. The new SAT report shows that scores in big urban centers and rural areas are significantly below those in suburbs and smaller cities, echoing similar patterns in family income and parents’ educational achievement.

For example, the average verbal score in big cities this year was 411, below suburbs and smaller cities by 21 points. Rural test takers averaged 459 on math, 26 points lower than their counterparts in suburbs and smaller cities.

In Payzant’s San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest urban system, verbal scores rose two points, to equal the verbal average for big cities. San Diego math scores were 18 points higher than the average for big-city districts, he said.

Payzant pointed out that San Diego has a higher proportion of students whose native language is not English, which hurts their verbal scores. In data made available Wednesday, almost 27% of county test-takers this year had English as their first language, compared with 16% nationwide.

Stewart, in a telephone interview from New York, said, “I think the SAT scores do demonstrate dramatically that we have a rising problem of haves and have-nots, and that would indicate two Americas, an achieving upper-middle and upper class and an underachieving underclass.”

Much-debated score gaps persist between males and females, while African-Americans and Latinos continue to perform less well than Anglos and Asian-Americans, the report said. Most ethnic groups showed tiny score gains in 1992, except for Mexican-Americans, who showed a troubling decrease of five points in verbal, to 372, and two points in math, to 425.

In San Diego County, whites scored highest in the verbal area, with an average of 458. Asian-Americans had an average of 393, African-Americans 359 and Mexican-Americans 372. In math, whites were at 519, Asian-Americans at 489, African-Americans at 414, and Mexican-Americans at 433.

Both white and Asian-American scores countywide were higher than in 1991. African-Amercian verbal scores dropped two points but math scores rose 14 points. Mexican-American verbal scores dropped nine points and math scores 15 points.

The worsening scores among Mexican-Americans, both local and national, may have been partly caused by an otherwise positive trend, a 6% rise in the number of those students who took the test in hopes of attending college. While a wider sample brings in more youngsters with limited English skills, Stewart said he thought something deeper caused the scores to drop. But he was not sure what.

Carla Ferri, director of undergraduate admissions for the UC system, said she was concerned about the Mexican-American scores. “We are watching it very carefully to see what it really, really means,” she said. Otherwise, she said, the recent reform movement in California high schools, requiring more and tougher courses for graduation, seems to have helped produce “some good news, but not extraordinary news.”

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Wednesday that he was encouraged at the turnaround in state scores, particularly in light of the demographic changes and increases in California students for whom English is a second language. Minority students in California made up 52% of test-takers here this year, compared to 36% in 1985, Honig reported. Nationally in 1992, 29% of test-takers were minorities.

Whatever small progress the 1992 scores represent, the worsening over a generation has been dramatic. In 1969, scores were 40 points higher in verbal and 17 higher in math. Besides the different demographics, experts say the decline was caused in part by less rigorous high school education and a decrease in the time students devote to reading.

“The strong, strong competition from television and MTV is part of it,” said Robert Cameron, the College Board’s senior research associate. Also worrisome, he said, is the apparent “loosening of standards” in high schools, as evidenced by rising classroom grade point averages nationwide just as SAT scores generally declined.

For example, the overall grade average for the Class of 1992 was 3.12, up from 3.07 in 1987; in the same five years, SAT verbal scores dropped seven points and math was unchanged.

SAT critics say they are more convinced than ever that the test is biased against girls and some minorities. On a mass level, the SAT accurately reflects problems in American education but its prominence blocks progress, according to Monty Neill, associate director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a Massachusetts group long opposed to SATs.

“The real concern is, what we do about the inferior education a lot of kids are getting? Talking about a couple of points’ score increase is not a way to get a solution. It’s pretty meaningless,” Neill said.

Payzant agreed about the shortfalls in education, conceding that sustained instructional improvements, such as more writing and reading programs, must become part and parcel of teaching along with more parental attention.

“It’s the amount of reading that a person does, the cumulative effect of being knowledgeable in broad areas, to have children started early on reading and as a regular habit beyond what they are required to read in school,” Payzant said. “Simply a book or two here and there in an English or history course is not sufficient for the background needed to do well on an SAT.”

San Diego County SAT Scores

AVG. VERBAL SCORE AVG. MATH SCORE Year County State Nat’l. County State Nat’l. 1983 429 421 425 483 474 468 1984 429 421 426 482 476 471 1985 431 424 431 484 480 475 1986 429 423 431 485 481 475 1987 430 424 430 487 482 476 1988 430 424 428 490 484 476 1989 432 422 427 492 484 476 1990 423 419 424 488 484 476 1991 421 415 422 489 482 474 1992 425 416 423 492 484 476

Source: San Diego County Office of Education