SAT Math Scores Rise

SAT math scores for college-bound Californians and students across the country this year climbed to the highest levels in more than three decades and average verbal results were the best since the late 1980s, the College Board reported Tuesday.

The overall improvement in California and nationally, however, masked a widening gap between the genders and among ethnic groups. Men enjoyed bigger gains than women on the college entrance exam, and Asian Americans and whites pulled further ahead of blacks and Latinos.

Nationally, averages climbed three points on both sections of the test, bringing the levels to 519 for math and 507 for verbal. California students also averaged 519 in math, up two points from the year before. But the state’s average in the verbal section was 499, despite a three-point improvement from 2002.

The maximum overall score on the SAT is 1,600, or 800 on each of the two sections. Changes of even one point are statistically significant, said officials with the College Board, the consortium that owns the SAT.

They and other education researchers attributed the rising averages to college-bound students taking more challenging courses such as calculus and physics, along with honors and advanced placement classes.

“The overall message is that, what you do in high school, and how you spend your time in the courses you take, matters,” said Joni Finney, a vice president with the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonprofit research group in San Jose.

Others cited students’ growing familiarity with standardized testing, which has spread across the country under the federal “No Child Left Behind” legislation, as well as the increasing use of test preparation instruction and study materials.

For California, the math score was the best in the 32 years for which the College Board has comparable records. The state’s math average, which was 517 in 1972, declined through the 1970s and bottomed at 498 in 1980. Since then, it generally has been on a slow, steady upswing.

California’s verbal average was the state’s best since 1988, when the level was 500. The state’s verbal average, which was 541 in 1972 but had sunk to 491 by 1991, has slowly climbed over the last decade.

At a Sacramento news conference, Kerry Mazzoni, California’s secretary for education, acknowledged that the state scores lag slightly behind the nation but stressed that California’s performance has improved despite educational challenges. She pointed out that minorities account for 42.5% of the students taking the SAT I in California, versus 24.8% nationally.

In addition, California has reported higher percentages of students who are from low-income homes and whose first language is not English.

“You know we have the most diverse population, and one of the most challenging populations in terms of providing educational services, and we are doing really quite a remarkable job in providing them access and moving toward equity,” Mazzoni said. “This is one more piece of evidence that we again are on the right track.”

College Board officials boasted that a record percentage of the test-takers were minorities -- 36% last year.

But the SAT score improvement was distributed unevenly among ethnic groups in California and across the country.

Nationally, the average scores for Asian Americans jumped six points on math to 575 and rose seven points on verbal to 508. That marked the first time that the Asian American average in verbal has topped the national mean since the College Board started breaking down SAT results by ethnicity in the mid-1970s. Whites climbed one point in math, to 534, and gained two points in verbal, to 529.

Mexican Americans showed no gain in math, with their average remaining at 457. They posted a two-point gain in verbal to 448. For African Americans, math fell one point to 426 and verbal climbed a point to 431.

Wayne Camara, vice president of research for the College Board, blamed that gap on the lower rate at which black and Latino high school students are enrolling in rigorous college-prep classes. “We just are not giving all the kids the courses they need,” he said.

For men, the average national math score rose three points to 537 and their verbal level climbed five points to 512. Among women, the average score for both math and verbal was 503, reflecting a three-point gain in math and a one-point rise in verbal.

Camara attributed that growing gender disparity to the fact that more women than men take the test, with more of those women coming from low-income families or homes where parents did not attend college.

Nationally, the average SAT math score of 519 was the highest since at least the mid-1960s, College Board officials said. The verbal score was the best since 1987, when the score also was 507.

Although the SAT was overhauled in the mid-1990s, the results for earlier years have been adjusted to make them comparable with recent years’ figures.

Tuesday’s results for the SAT I, the most widely taken college entrance exam, followed a favorable report for California last week from ACT Inc., the owner of a rival test, the ACT.

Last week’s report showed that the average ACT score for California high school seniors edged up slightly over the last year, reaching its highest level in the 37 years that the figures have been tracked. Nationally, the ACT average remained unchanged. Of California high school seniors who graduated in 2003, 54% took the SAT, versus 15% for the ACT.