Background

For more than a decade, the American public has repeatedly been told that our educational system has declined in the quality of education provided to our children. The 1983 report A Nation at Risk was especially influential, followed by other reports that have generated a crisis mentality regarding how much and how well our students are learning. However, some recent analyses of the data have concluded that our schools are doing better than ever before in educating our young people-at least, insofar as we can tell from a thoughtful and probing analysis of standardized test scores.

What about the decline in SAT scores?

Perhaps because Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores are reported yearly and because they affect the lives of students applying for college, the public has been especially concerned about reported declines in SAT scores. Rarely, however, has the media provided enough information to put this decline into perspective. Consider the following:

• The 1995 SAT scores were higher than they have been in years, but the significance of this is uncertain because of a change in scoring procedures.
  
  
• Overall, the average SAT scores were about 5% lower in 1992 than in 1960 (The Sandia Report, 1993). The verbal scores and math scores dropped substantially through the 1970s, then rose significantly by 1985. The average mathematics score rose again slightly by 1992, while the average verbal score first declined and then rose to within one point of the 1980 score (Stedman, 1994).
  
  
• About half of the decline between 1960 and 1990 can be attributed to the fact that the test is now taken by proportionately fewer students in the top 20% of their graduating class and proportionately more students in the lower 60%; furthermore, it is taken by more minority students, more students of lower socioeconomic status, and more students who are non-U.S.citizens or who report that English is not their primary language-all factors that correlate with lower test scores across a wide spectrum of measures (Sandia Report, 1993; Stedman, 1994). In other words, about half the decline in test scores reflects changes in who is taking the test-and who isn't.
  
  
• The gap in scores between white students and students of color has narrowed in the last twenty years, particularly for African-American students (The Sandia Report, 1993).
  
  
• In 1941 when the SAT test was normed, 6.68% of the group scored above 650. The proportion of high scorers has increased 65%, despite the fact that a considerably larger proportion of test takers now come from groups that have consistently scored lower than the elite group on which the test was originally normed (Bracey, 1994).
  
  
• Educational Testing Service, which develops the test items for the SAT, has admitted that the SAT today is more difficult than it was in 1975 (Berliner, 1992, citing the 1991 draft of the Sandia Report).
  
  
• When students taking the SAT in 1975 are matched with a demographically similar sample from 1990, we see a slight gain in test scores from 1975 to 1990. In other words, students who traditionally have taken the SAT-relatively advantaged and primarily white youth-show a significant gain in scores since 1975, despite the fact that the test is more difficult.

In summary, the SAT test scores declined about 5% between 1960 and 1992, but since 1975 the scores of the scholastically high-ranking, socioeconomically privileged, and racially white students have risen slightly-
despite the fact that the SAT test is significantly more difficult than in 1975. Furthermore, the scores of Asian students have risen to slightly top the scores of white students, the scores of African-American students have risen substantially, and the scores of Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and American Indian students have also risen somewhat. Overall, the 1995 test scores are the highest they've been in years.

How valid are SAT test scores in determining the successes and failures of our public schools?

Not very. This is partly because the SAT scores have bearing, naturally, only on the achievement of students who have chosen to take the test; these scores do not necessarily say anything about how well our schools are succeeding at educating most of our students. Another reason is that the proportion of students reflecting different groups-different class standings, different ethnic groups, different socioeconomic groups in particular-changes from year to year. Thus, comparing SAT averages across the years is like comparing apples and oranges. Furthermore, these scores reflect achievement in only two areas, mathematics and verbal/reading skills. Perhaps most critical of all, the SAT reflects students' ability to disentangle "verbal conundrums and mathematics puzzlers" in a speed endurance test more than it reflects their general mathematics and verbal/reading ability (see sources cited by Stedman, 1994, p. 137). It is noteworthy that over 240 colleges and universities have dropped the SAT as an admissions requirement.

Assessment experts argue, then, that the SAT decline is not worth worrying about (Bracey, 1994 and earlier reports; Stedman, 1994; Sandia Report, 1993; Berliner, 1992). From the other kinds of measures discussed in these studies, including data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, intelligence tests and other standardized achievement tests, and College Board Achievement tests, we see that "college-bound students have not lost ground academically" (Stedman, 1994, p. 137). During the greatest decline in the SAT scores, 1967 to 1976, "college-bound students improved their performance in English composition, the three high school sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics), and the two major foreign languages (French and Spanish). In the past decade, there have been increases on all the achievement tests. Scores have risen even as the number taking them has gone up" (Stedman, 1994, p. 137). Furthermore, the scores of non college-bound students have generally risen even more than those of college-bound students (Rand Institute on Education and Training, 1994, p. xxxv). Though standardized test scores are not an especially good indication of the quality of education that students have received, at least the overall comparison between 1975 and the early 1990s is encouraging.

However, these gains in test scores should not be taken to mean that there is no room for improvement; indeed, the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores indicate that relatively few students achieve substantial proficiency in the various subjects assessed, while many still struggle with basic concepts and processes in the disciplines. American education can and should be improved-but at least it is not as unsuccessful as we are often led to believe.

REFERENCES

Berliner, D. C. (1992). Educational reform in an era of disinformation. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, San Antonio, Texas, February. ERIC: ED 348 710.

Berliner, D. C., & Biddle, B. J. (1995). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America's public schools. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bracey, G. W. (1994). The fourth Bracey report on the condition of public education. Phi Delta Kappan, 76, 115-127. Earlier Bracey reports were printed in the October 1993, 1992, and 1991 issues of the Phi Delta Kappan.

Rand Institute on Education and Training. (1994). Student achievement and the changing American family. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. (For more information, call (310) 451-7002).

Sandia National Laboratories. (1993). Perspectives on education in America [known as the Sandia Report]. Journal of Educational Research, 86, 259-310. A 1991 draft of this report has also been widely circulated and cited.

Stedman, L. C. (1994). The Sandia Report and U.S. achievement: An assessment. Journal of Educational Research, 87, 133-146.

Prepared for the Michigan English Language Arts Framework project and © 1996 by Constance Weaver. In C. Weaver, L. Gillmeister-Krause, & G. Vento-Zogby, Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education (Heinemann, 1996). May be copied.