Month In Review

Education
August,1996

Lowering Scholastic Test Standards

A new policy involved in the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) implies that the organization believes today's students can never match the scores of their parents and grandparents.

Last year, the Board announced that the average score on both the mathematical and verbal tests would be "recentered" -- meaning that the standards would be lowered. The latest SAT scores, announced last week, were the first to be graded on the new curve. After many years of insisting that the test was an "unchanging standard," the average score was recalculated to reflect the results of students who took the test in 1990 -- rather than by the standards of those who took the test in 1941.

• Originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test when introduced in 1941, the average score was set at 500 on a scale of 200 to 800.

• As a result of the recentering, a student receiving a 508 on the mathematics test this year would have received only a 484 in prior years.

• Someone receiving 505 on the verbal test this year would have received just a 428 last year.

• A score of 800 on the verbal test is no longer a mark of perfection -- it can be the equivalent of a less-than-perfect 730.

Students' scores have varied over the years, causing some specialists to speculate that the College Board abandoned its "unchanging standard" too soon.

• Scores reached an all-time average high of 478 on the verbal portion of the test and 502 on the math portion in 1963 and 1964.

• Then scores dropped steadily until 1980, when verbal scores leveled off at 424 and math scores at 466.

• But by 1995, math scores had risen to an average of 482 -- with 21 percent of students scoring more than 600.

• Verbal scores, however have not risen above 428 for 20 years.

Experts say that students are increasing their academic course load in every subject except English.

If English teachers do not believe that grammar and proper syntax are important, neither will their students. So the new average, they say, validates mediocrity.

In 1977, a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by the College Board concluded that the decline in academic achievement among American students was the result, in part, of the increased ethnic diversity of the test takers, less homework, the proliferation of nonacademic courses and grade inflation.

Source: Diane Ravitch (New York University), "Defining Literacy Downward," New York Times, August 28, 1996.