SAT Scores Down This Year

Colleges are reporting that SAT scores of students are down this year, and David S. Kahn, who has been tutoring kids for the SAT test since 1989, confirms the drop in OpinionJournal.com.

[T]he scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200 to 800).

So what is going wrong? Is the test different? Are the kids less prepared? What’s the problem?

The test has been rejiggered, Kahn explains, and is probably more difficult. It includes a longer reading section. the result is that

Studying vocabulary lists before the test--a long-favored shortcut to lifting scores--just won't cut it anymore. Students who read widely and often throughout their elementary and high-school years develop the kinds of reading skills measured by the new SAT. Students who avoid reading don't--and can't develop them in a cram course.

The math section is also more challenging, including some pre-calculus for the first time, as well as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry it tested before.

Quite simply, this is not the same SAT. Students, anxious parents and college admissions officers... need to adjust our expectations accordingly.


People complain that the SAT is biased and that the bias explains why students don't do well. That's true--it is biased. It's biased against people who aren't well-educated.

So maybe people will start to sit up and pay attention. They might figure out “that their children are not getting good educations.”

That would be a start. Then we could all decide what to do about the great big flabby education system we have tolerated these many years.

Why do we put up with it? Is it because it really doesn’t matter to us if the school system is a mess? That kids can sleepwalk through their school days and it doesn’t make any difference?