The high school class of 2006 recorded the sharpest drop in SAT scores in 31 years, a decline that the exam’s owner, the College Board, said was partly due to some students taking the newly lengthened test only once instead of twice.
The results come several months after numerous colleges reported surprisingly low SAT scores for this year’s incoming college freshmen. The nonprofit College Board, which had said scores would be down this year, released figures Tuesday showing combined critical reading and math skills fell seven points on average to 1021.
You can read the article to see all the lame excuses. This is the result after five years of the “education” president.
Relying on the Federal Government for your child’s educational success is your own fault.
#1: agreed.
Oh my God – they lengthened it? It was long enought when I took it!
#1
Have you seen the increase in home schooling over the past 31 years?
Steve-O, it may be beyond your ken or politics; but, there was a time when the US public school system was the world leader. High school education was introduced and developed worldwide on the US model.
Elitists who prefer private education have always been around. The decline of our public school system has not.
the new test is poorly designed and at almost 4 hours, it’s too damn long. THREE hours is long enough! I’d like to see anyone do well at a test that lasts that long, in one sitting!!!!
I think the College Board needs to re-think the test, and the pricing. $41 bucks is a lot for a test. It’s normal for a kid to take the SATs 2 or 3 times (as you can chose the BEST score out of the lot). At 21bucks a pop this was…well, usually no resisted by parents, but now at 42 bucks, it’s a little more daunting. If they’d gone to 30 bucks…I really do think the scores wouldn’t have dropped, at all. I can see parents paying 60 or 90 to have the kid take the test a few times, but not 80 or 120. It’s not the colleg bound here that are the problem.
Now, having said that, let’s also consider that the bulk of the kids graduating from high school do NOT take the SATs. Some go right into the unemployment group, and others go to work, while others go to junior college, do two years there, and then move on to a 4-year college, without taking the SATs. So, it’s not like it’s an accurate view of how well high schools perform. In fact, if EVERYONE was forced to take the SAT, you’d see much, much, much lower scores.
As for the ACTs….they’ve always been easier, historically.
Our schools sucked back in 1975, too. I think there was a bit of improvement in the Bush1/Clinton era — a very little bit. But, that’s obviously been reversed.
Gee, wonder if all the illiterate ILLEGAL ALIENS with IQ’s of 80 might have something to do with this?
Naw…can’t be….
I thought no child was to be left behind?
Let me make sure I understand this:
1. Test scores have been dropping for 30 years.
2. Teachers’ unions have fought every attempt to reform the schools.
3. Public schools have fought every attempt to give children other opportunities to learn.
4. Bush proposes to reform public schooling. These reforms are fought tooth and nail by the schools and teachers.
5. Scores drop again.
6. This is Bush’s fault.
Oh, and the word is “clown”. It’s hard to take a rant about education seriously from someone who thinks alternate spellings are kewl.
#10, the problem with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that it plainly sabotages the public schools. ESL (English as a Second Language) students are one of the groups of people who are required to show improvements on their tests as a group, but nobody is in the ESL program for more than 2 years or so, and it is those people who will have the hardest time taking a standardized test written in English by folks with U.S. cultural bias. NCLB was designed (deliberately or not) to make a large percentage of the public schools fail such that parents (who vote) would see that the only viable option was a voucher system – and privatized education throughout this great land.
#10
Agree, The my way or the highway attitude of schools and the teachers unions are directly responsibly for this, regardless of the political retoric on both sides of the aisle. It is good to know they have figured out how to test for their own shortcommings I guess but the education business, and it is a business, needs to get back to teaching and not covering their ass with excuses.
When you were stretching to tie this to Bush, did you hurt yourself?
Now, I’m all for laying blame where blame is due, but Bush is to blame for this as much as Clinton was for 9/11. Both are just partisan stupidities that people ramble off on like a pissing contest.
I guarantee you this – this 1998 high school graduate with a SAT of 1450 and a full ride to the college of his choice won’t be sending his kids to public indoctrination centers. Mine will be home schooled, and I’m proud to say it. I was home schooled for many years myself, and somehow I’m married, have a great job, a college degree and my first child will shortly arrive.
Not to mention I’m happy, own a home, etc. I won’t leave my children behind, that’s for sure.
According to one person here, private schools are “elitist”. I do not judge anyone by their choice of private vs public. However, if your public school is failing, is it “elitist” to take action and go to a capable private school?
It seems that now days school is just a day care center with little learning going on. I blame the parents for not taking an active roll in their children’s education.
As someone who is typing this from within the walls of a top 0.5% high school in the nation, I can say that public schooling is not giving kids what they need. My school, the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, teaches students how to think – not how to answer multiple choice questions. The school also conforms the Arkansas State University system, therefore our funding comes from the University – not the nation. This, I believe, is the nation’s main problem… having grants depend on test scores.
America doesn’t pay its teachers anywhere near enough. From there all the problems flow.
I just looked at the charts for the last ~40 years…. they’ve been on a steady decline.
you pick on Bush, but the average national scores average higher for the bush years, than for the clinton years…. if anything bush has brought the average up a few points….
honestly, I don’t think there is a connection.
I would accept your assessment of Bush, Eideard if his program had actually been fully implemented, not fought by the Teachers Unions and challenged in court by all the public intrest parasites. The fact is, as Michael Heinz and Tim Champ mentioned, this isn’t a new problem, it’s been in the making for many years.
I notice that *j* is now a home school advocate, as opposed to yesterday when he was an anti-home school advocate. Must make for interesting morning shaves there *J*…not knowing which face is going to be in the mirror.
As to *English as a second language*…..not sure where #11….Jim gets his figures at, but in California, Arizona the average length of taking the classes is a lot longer than 2 years.
In no other profession are the members allowed to practice without periodic updates and further education, but teachers refuse to allow testing of themselves to keep them abreast of where they are and if they need to update their skills. Doctors, Nurses, even hair stylists must do this……but the teachers unions refuse to accept it and fight it tooth and nail when it comes up.
When you look at test results and the quality of education in this country you have to look at the teachers and their union as one of the major hurdles to improving our educational system.
Bush isn’t the cause.
I agree with #10. I have seen school years get shorter and shorter over the past 30 years. The school year is mandated as a MINIMUM and isn’t it strange how that seems to be the MAXIMUM.
In some European countries they have competition. They allow the school dollars to follow the student. So if the student goes to a particular school then that school gets the money. The system works very well. The teacher’s unions have fought that for decades in this country. They come up with a lot of excuses, but where it has been implimented it has been sucessful. (in this country and the supreme court ruled it was legal).
Until we break the public school monopoly and allow the money to follow the student to ANY school our primary education system will continue to decline. (We have a fantastic college and university system.) The government has to enable everyone to get a primary education, that doesn’t mean the government has to actually do the task. They can pay someone else to do the task. There was a recent study about public school students vs those that got school choice in the area. (Washington DC I believe) What was interesting was that after 1 year the test scores were similar, but no one made much of the fact that the schools that were choices recieved half the amount of money the public schools got and the students were on parr. Imagine if the choosen school got the same amount of money pers student that the public school was getting! (They could ahve a longer school year and pay the teachers more for the same tax dollars!)
It isn’t elitest to send you child to a better school. It is called being a caring, smart, and finantially capable parent. (Those that can’t afford it but want to are getting screwed by the teachers unions.)
One question, if public schools are so good why do teachers usually send their children to private schools?
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, the problem comes down to this – teachers can’t hit kids..but all joking aside let me be serious here for a moment.
The problem is this, the way the teaching system is in public schools – teachers often have to teach to the dumbest kid in the class. So here you have little Bryan who is a math geek and loves Math and big Bobby “Bubba” Y who is on the football team.
Bubba thinks he can make it to college as an offensive tackle but doesn’t care about academics. Bryan wants to goto Brown or Lehigh or Penn State for Engineering. But Bryan sucks out loud on his SAT scores.
Why? Because the material was dumbed down for the whole class, so Bubbas feelings weren’t hurt. They didn’t have Honors placement in classes for Bryan and he was feeling he wasn’t being challeneged.
Think this doesn’t happen….? Think again!
One question, if public schools are so good why do teachers usually send their children to private schools?
How many teachers do you know who can afford to send their kids to private school??? Aside from those who’s spouses were lawyers or doctors (etc) I haven’t known any. Around here the starting pay for teachers is barely above $30k. That beats flipping burgers, but it’s barely enough to live on in a single wage-earner household.
I’ll be the first to admit that a disappointing percentage of our current teachers are underqualified, but with pay like that, what does anybody expect? Private schools usually pay even less, but the work is much much (MUCH!!!) less stressful, because in comparison to public schools, there are NO disciplinary problems.
The essential difference between a public and private education is the difference in the quality of your classmates, not your teachers. $4k and up per year in tuition keeps the riff-raff out, thus no catering to the lowest common denominator, etc etc.
I know a lot of teachers who send their kids to private school. There are plenty of parochial schools that are not too expensive. Also statistically public school teachers send their kids to private schoold more so than the general population. Clearly, if the public schools were so good the reverse would be true. But the public school teachers don’t want to eat their own dog food.
jim, do you have stats to back up that last statement? Where I live it’s clearly not true.
FWIW, every year a larger percentage of the general population takes these exams. 30 years ago, the only students who sat for the SAT needed it for college. The score trend is, in part, due to a larger sample.
Most schools do a pretty good job, but there are too many that are spectacularly bad, and they are usually in low-income neighborhoods where the teachers’ union job and bennies are more important than educating kids. That must change. Just don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater…vouchers are NOT the answer for everybody.
Google is your friend.:
link [edited — pls use tinyurl] points to a study done in 2000
” According to a new study based on the 2000 Census by educational researcher Denis Doyle of Chevy Chase, Md., 24.5 percent of Los Angeles’ public-school teachers are sending their own children to private schools, versus only 15.7 percent of the general public.
If Los Angeles were exceptional, it might be easy to shrug off the numbers. But throughout the state and throughout the nation, the numbers tell the same story. In six of 11 California metropolitan areas studied by Doyle — including four of the five largest — public-school teachers send their kids to private schools at a higher rate than the public.”
More direct link to the study
Doyle study
Saying that the scores have dropped and worrying about it acknowledges the SATs as a valid test, which it really can’t be considering the vast diversity of humanity in the U.S.
“because in comparison to public schools, there are NO disciplinary problems.”
I don’t suppose you have any facts to back that up, xrayspex, because it sounds like you just pulled it out of your ear.
Your right Jim Google is my friend.
I believe this is the Study. If you read it you will see they admit it is not an exact science (the way the assembled the data) So that means there is room for bias. WOW! Who would have guessed? If you look even harder you will find all sorts of issues with this study. Unpublished census info stuff like that.
That being said Denis P. Doyle. runs a FOR PROFIT company that consults on education.
Hum?”Maybe if we tell the cities that the schools are bad they will pay us a consulting fee instead of putting the money back into the school to where it belongs.” he he he.
Let’s guess at how much he charges for a “consulting” fee.
Capitalist pig! 🙂
http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/Fwd-1.1.pdf