SAT Scores

Over the period 1963–1980 the average score of high school seniors taking the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) of verbal ability fell in an almost unbroken trend from 478 to 424. The average SAT math score fell over this period from 502 to 466 (O'Neill 1984). While the declines up to 1970 are explained in large part by changes in the composition of the test-taking population, these changes do not explain the declines during the 1970s (On Further Examination 1977). These trends, a cause for real concern, have been emphasized in many of the recent reports criticizing the quality of United States education (e.g,, NCEE 1983).

In assessing explanations for the decline, it is important to keep in mind that the scores measure the skills of students who have completed twelve years of education. Consequently, any set of SAT scores tells us more about what was happening during the previous twelve years than it tells us about the factors affecting student skills in the year the tests were

taken. Thus, to explain the declines in scores during the 1970s, we must look for changes that took place primarily during the 1960s.

One category of explanation for the SAT score declines focuses on changes in the world outside the schools, including a sense of disillusion arising from the Vietnam War, an increase in TV watching, and a higher rate of marital dissolutions (On Further Examination 1977). A second category includes changes directly related to formal schooling. The best-documented schooling change contributing to the score decline is a reduction in the number of academic courses students take. This decline was the result, in part, of an attempt during the 1960s and early 1970s to tailor high school education to the needs and preferences of individual students. Subsequent research (Bryk et al. 1984; Coleman et al. 1982; Harnischfeger and Wiley 1984) supports the link between the number of academic courses students take and their scores on standardized tests.

In the four years since the SAT scores bottomed out in 1980, the average SAT scores have risen slightly (from 424 to 426 on the verbal section and from 466 to 471 on the math section: Ranbom 1984). Also, during the period 1976–1983, the gap between the average score of black students and that of white students on both the SAT verbal and math tests declined slightly. In 1976, the ratio of the average score of black students to that of white students on the SAT verbal tests was 0.736; in 1983, it was 0.765. The comparable numbers for the SAT math test are 0.718 and 0.762 (Wainer 1984). Why have the SAT scores started to rise again—albeit slowly? Why has the black-white gap closed somewhat? To answer these questions, we need to learn about the early schooling experiences and the achievement of the students who took the SAT tests in the early 1980s.