Increase in Test Taking, Not Marred by Typical Decrease in Score

According to two articles today, SAT scores remained flat this year. A graph in the Wall Street Journal’s coverage illustrates that this news comes after two years of decline from a peak reached in 2005. While WSJ’s headline “Class of ’08 Fails…” sets a dour scene, the people who run the test are actually encouraged by the results. In USA Today, Gaston Caperton, head of the College Board, said that since the amount of students who took the test increased by 1.6 percent, it is, in fact, good news that scores remained flat because they tend to dip when more people take them.

This tendency held true for black and Hispanic students, whose rate of SAT participation increased again this year. They had a dip in scores which was offset by a bump in the test results of whites and Asians. Overall, minority participation has increased, making up nearly 40 percent of test takers.

In Public Agenda’s 2005 report Life After High School: Young People Talk About Their Hopes and Prospects, large majorities of students said that “virtually all students” in their high school were expected to take the SAT (70 percent of blacks, 68 percent of Hispanics, 64 percent of Asian Americans and 60 percent of whites). Despite these expectations, the numbers of those saying they actually took the test weren’t always as high. Students from upper income families were much more likely (75 percent) to say they took the test, compared to those from lower income families (58 percent).

What matters is that participation in the pre-college exam is increasing; this reflects a growing desire by young people to seek a post-secondary education. This general attitude was reflected in our 2007 report Squeeze Play: How Parents and the Public Look at Higher Education Today, in which half of Americans said that “a college education is necessary for a person to be successful in today’s work world.” And parents of high school children were even more likely to say so. Clearly, an increase in SAT participation, often a prerequisite for post-secondary enrollment, indicates that students are getting the message that college is a must.