What surprises me is how well Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee performed. Not surprised at Michigan’s rank, between Texas and DC, almost as low as Florida, given the decades of underfunding education.
Steve
3 Likes
Look at the percentage of test takers of those really high scoring states. 1% 2% 5% 6%. Elitism…?
I heard many yrs ago that the SAT was mostly an East Coast thing and the rest of the country focused on the ACT. Is that still true? Was it ever true? That might have something to do with these numbers
7 Likes
Exactly. If you only have the very top performers actually taking the SAT in certain states, while in others you have a larger proportion of students taking it, you’re going to see this.
Pete
7 Likes
Michigan had 84% take the test – it’s “mandatory” for 11th grade students. Mississippi had only 1% take it, and they had a high average.
6 Likes
You guys make a very good point. Looking down the “participation” list, broadly speaking, the fewer that take the test, the higher the average score. There are exceptions. Only 17% of Okies tested, but they still ranked next to last. Maybe the head of that state’s education department can tell us how having Bibles in every class room will improve that?
I remember taking flox of those multiple guess tests over the years in school. I still remember a test question about cork, because I read it so many times. Seems I made the assumption that every state would do testing at the same pace as Michigan did, in the 60s. Maybe some state’s (L&Ses) have decided if they don’t ask the question, they will not get an answer they don’t want to hear.
Steve
3 Likes
I graduated high school in Iowa in the 1970s, and almost none of the college-bound students took the SAT. Everyone took the ACT.
The following link shows the percentage of students taking the SAT vs. ACT in each state.
The ACT still seems to be more popular in the upper Midwest.
SAT% ACT% Iowa 2.4 97.7 Illinois 4.9 95.1 Minnesota 3.9 96.1 Wisconsin 2.5 97.5
_ Pete
1 Like
Muy bien. Thanks. The plot begins to thicken.
It follows there would be a national ranking for states for the ACT. Broadly speaking, again, states with lower participation rates, rank higher. The Okies still don’t know anything. Maybe they should put two Bibles in each classroom?
Steve
2 Likes
They must be using a different scale today. The average score in Wisconsin is 1250. When I took the SAT test 50+ years ago, 1250 was a about a Top 20% score.
intercst
1 Like
According to the participation rate, only 2% of Wisconsin students take the SAT today. It’s probably reasonable to assume that the 2% that take the test would have been in the top 20% 50 years ago.
93% of Wisconsin students take the ACT, with an average score of 19.2. which puts that state at #34 nationally.
Steve
4 Likes
The SAT’s have been "re-normed’ I think twice since about 1990
I didn’t take either test till I was almost 30, 1986/87-ish. 1200 at the time was a Mensa qualifying score
2 Likes
Participation rates are very low in the higher scoring states.
States with High Average SAT Scores:
- Kansas: Holds the highest average total SAT score at 1256.
- Wyoming: Follows closely with an average score of 1253.
- Utah: Achieves a high average score of 1230.
- North Dakota: Boasts an average SAT score of 1287, but with only 1% of eligible students taking the exam.
- Wisconsin: Shows a high average score of 1252, with a low participation rate of 2%.
There are some phony ideas around the SAT. The IQ is not measured by the SAT. It is supposed to be. Meaning the 1600 max score is a 160 IQ. That was the conceptualization of the scoring.
The test is problem solving lessons by grade. That is not IQ but it is maturation levels. Colleges need mature enrollees.
I was a lousy student but on IQ tests I score 135. My auditory is third rate but I still score 135 on IQ tests. I have had my cognition tested but that does not directly read as an IQ test. My visual skills are very good.
Some kids do extremely well with structure. When the pandemic hit those kids were in big trouble for life. I do well making my own structure. I did well during the pandemic.
They’re using the same scale (briefly the scale was changed to 2400 instead of 1600, but that was discarded after a few years), but the questions are clearly easier today than when we took it 45-50 years ago. The verbal section in particular has been “dumbed down” by quite a lot, they now use only common vocabulary, so anyone who even reads a little will instantly recognize all words used on the exam. That wasn’t so decades ago, back then you sometimes had to “figure out” what a word meant by etymology or by context. The math section hasn’t been “dumbed down” as much, but the proportion of “easy” questions is higher today than previously, so there is less time pressure because many more of the questions can be answered in seconds leaving precious time for the more difficult questions. For some anecdotal evidence, my wife and I scored in the 1300s back 40+ years ago, but our kids almost all scored in the 1500s, and one nearly had a perfect score at 1590 a couple of years ago. And none of our kids have ever had a tutor, a coach, or an SAT class.
There’s also another recent phenomenon that rankles the heck out of me. A close relative who is a principal at a public school in a middle-class to upper-middle-class area tells me that there has been an explosion in the numbers of kids that get “special accommodations” for the SAT and similar exams. The “special accommodations” is that they get to take the exam in a room with fewer people and, more importantly, that they get a lot more time for each section. Instead of, say, 3 hours total today, they might get 5 hours total. That makes a timed exam a lot easier. Turns out that many parents shop around for doctors that will give their precious kid the right diagnosis, and submit the proper forms, to attain this “special accommodations”.
Yep.
That was going on in Connecticut 20 years ago. You would have expected the cites like Hartford and Bridgeport with all the 'crack babies" would have the largest percentage of special accommodations students. Instead it was wealthy Greenwich. They apparently had psychologists you could go to that would diagnose your kid with some malady that qualified for the “special accommodations”. I’m surprised the CDC didn’t investigate it as an epidemic. {{ LOL }}
intercst
1 Like
I always worked best without supervision.
intercst
What are your sources for your claim that the SAT has been dumbed down?
My own brain, my own kids brains, combined with 3 old SAT practice books (presumably mine, and the next 2 siblings) that my parents found when they cleaned out their house after selling it. My kids looked at the practice books from the late 70s/early 80s, and tried some of the questions. They were unequivocal that the old questions were much more difficult on average, especially in the verbal section. I looked at a few of the questions as well, and it was pretty clear that it was true.
As far as sources, I am not the only one saying this. It’s been looked at by many other folks including educators and experts on mass testing. Here’s one of the top google search results -
I didn’t know that they stopped deducting 1/4 “point” for wrong answers until 15 seconds ago!!!
I always thought that was the stupidest thing about the SAT.
Thanks for the link.
Deducting for wrong answers is intended to make guessing less helpful.
If you get down to the last couple of minutes and have a lot of questions left, you can quickly just answer the remaining questions. With 5 options, random guessing will - on average - give you 1 right answer and 4 wrong answers. So deducting 1/4 of a point for wrong answers discourages random guessing.
However, if you actually read the question and can eliminate one or two answers, random guessing among the remaining options is likely to pay off even with the penalty for wrong answers.
Without the wrong answer penalty, you are encouraging last-minute random guessing, as it will likely add one or two correct responses and increase the score.
–Peter <== learned a lot about taking tests back in the day because it was often easier than learning all the gory details of the subject matter.