Lessons in higher education: What California can learn
Keeping California public university options open
Superintendents: Well-paid and walking away
The debt to degree connection
College in prison: How earning a degree can lead to a new life
Library or police, a small town’s struggle puts a spotlight on library inequities across California
The results for the newly revised SAT exam show that less than half of all test takers were fully college-ready and that ethnic and racial disparities persist in California and the rest of the nation.
This first round of student scores after the much-discussed overhaul were released Tuesday without comparisons to past versions of the influential college entrance exam.
California students who graduated high school in 2017 scored 531 in the so-called evidence-based reading and writing section and 524 in math. Those were just two and three points respectively below the national average. (A perfect score would be 800 in each section.)
Test administrators have established new score benchmarks to identify students likely ready to take and succeed with at least a C grade in entry-level college-credit bearing courses. The California scores show that 70 percent of test-takers met the 480 benchmark of college readiness in the reading and verbal section; 47 percent did so by hitting at least 530 in math; and 45 percent were college ready in both skill areas. That is close to the national share of SAT takers who were deemed college-ready: 70 percent in reading, 49 percent in math and 46 in both.
The test’s content was dramatically changed last year to align much more closely with subject material taught in high school and to make it less dependent on test-taking skills and strategies taught in expensive preparatory classes.
Officials of the College Board, which sponsors the exam, said it was impossible to compare the new results with past ones and declined to offer any explanation of how the new material could have pushed mean scores higher than in past versions. (Under the old test, national average scores in 2016 were somewhat lower: 494 in reading and 508 in math.)
Before the redesign, the College Board defined college readiness differently and linked it to the likelihood of students earning at least an overall GPA of B minus in college freshman year. Under that old formula, about 42 percent of test takers were deemed college-ready in 2015, the last year with a wide enough sample of test takers on the old exam, officials said.
But whatever the changes in the exam, ethnic differences in results persist as they have for decades. Asian American students once again scored on top, with a combined two-part total mean of 1181 nationally and 1145 in California; whites, 1118 national and 1153 in the state; Latinos, 990 and 992; Pacific Islanders, 986 and 1022; and African-Americans, 941 and 961.
College Board officials said they are encouraged by steady increases in student scores in all ethnic and racial groups between the time they take the preliminary PSAT earlier in high school and when they take the actual SAT in junior and senior years. David Coleman, College Board president, said that shows the new test is doing what it is supposed to do, focusing on high school course work and judging skills that students can build in high school. “The new SAT reflects the best work students are doing in their classroom, their hard work in class and doing homework,” he said.
The online Khan Academy, in partnership with the College Board, began offering free tutorials and practice tests on the SAT last year. And officials once again touted what they claim are benefits to students who practice on the Khan website for at least 20 hours. As EdSource reported in May, those student reportedly gain on average 115 point gain between their PSAT and SAT, double the gains other students showed.
Critics of the SAT continue to allege that the revised test was really designed to compete better with the rival ACT exam, to which it had been losing market share. The new SAT is “a marketing ploy designed to sell more tests, not a better tool for tracking college readiness,” according to Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), a group that has long questioned the value of standardized testing in college admissions. In his statement, Schaeffer also noted that an increasing number of colleges are dropping the requirement for any test scores in admissions applications or making such scores optional.
About 1.7 million in the class of 2017 took the SAT across the country, including about 226,700 in California, or 53 percent of the state’s high school graduates this year.
Group | California | Nation |
---|---|---|
Asian Americans | 1145 | 1181 |
Whites | 1153 | 1118 |
Pacific Islander | 1022 | 986 |
Latino | 992 | 990 |
African American | 961 | 941 |
All groups | 1055 | 1060 |
The College Board
The system has enrolled more in-state residents, but not enough to meet targets set by the state.
Two prominent organizations say the proposal would dismantle progress made to improve reading instruction for those students.
Fresno City College professor Tom Boroujeni is unable to fulfill his duties as academic senate president while on leave, the latest update reads.
This is a continuing EdSource series on proven innovations in higher education that relate to the problems facing California’s higher education systems.
Comments (3)
Comments Policy
We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy.
Muvaffak GOZAYDIN 5 years ago5 years ago
I have been arguing college readiness for the last 20 years . I have said if a student is not ready for college, he should not be accepted to college. Remedial classes at colleges are waste of time and money. Solve the problem at source. First time I see some figures for college readiness. It iş sad to see half of high school graduates are not ready for college. A rough SAT … Read More
I have been arguing college readiness for the last 20 years . I have said if a student is not ready for college, he should not be accepted to college. Remedial classes at colleges are waste of time and money. Solve the problem at source. First time I see some figures for college readiness. It iş sad to see half of high school graduates are not ready for college. A rough SAT score is 500 for writing and Math too. There are 20 million HE students at the universities. How many of them have a total score of 1000 out of 1600. Please anybody know? mgozaydin.at.hotmail.com
Vito 7 years ago7 years ago
If Asians score the highest, why do I still hear the argument that the SAT is biased against minorities and favors whites?
el 7 years ago7 years ago
Access to the Khan Academy test prep is really a positive step. I thank everyone who worked to make that happen. To score well on these tests, you do have to do test prep, and it helps to take the exams multiple times, at least twice but having more experience with these exams is better. The stress and cognitive load from going to a new location, with the specific test rules and security will always be … Read More
Access to the Khan Academy test prep is really a positive step. I thank everyone who worked to make that happen.
To score well on these tests, you do have to do test prep, and it helps to take the exams multiple times, at least twice but having more experience with these exams is better. The stress and cognitive load from going to a new location, with the specific test rules and security will always be a factor. Students whose families commit to getting them to more test dates and who can give them the time to study will always have a significant advantage on these exams.
The current SAT can be taken with a graphing calculator, and these calculators can create a substantial advantage in lessening the time necessary to complete those portions of the test. I would recommend that any school with disadvantaged students make sure to have a collection of these calculators that can be regularly used in class and lent out for these exams. A friend of mine is a community college instructor and says that many of her students are struggling through their math classes without access to one of these required calculators. They do more than just the occasional square root and cosine these days and the way problems are set in these advanced math classes assumes they are available.