Get Schooled

By V for Vendetta

August 27, 2007 12:15 PM | Link to this

Nope, we WILL go down. Of course there will be the people who trumpet the fact that every kid in Georgia takes the SAT, and to some extent, they’re right. That is certainly PART of the problem. But all the blame can’t be placed on the state’s draconian way of thinking and overall ignorance to education, some of it has to fall in the individual districts and the myriad things they are doing that are completely counter-intuitive to good education. The state’s largest district for example, Gwinnett County, feels that doing away with technical classes will make magical achievers out of all those students. Entire graduating classes of college-bound students! Of course!

Yeah, right, and if you believe that I have some bottles of air I would like to sell you.

The truth of the matter is this: while SAT scores can NOT be compared from state to state (tis true), they do tell us a good bit of the story. Education in Georgia sucks with a capital S-U-C-K-S. I know, I know, there are exceptions to every rule, but until the populace wakes up and focuses less on the politics of the matter and more on the matter itself, we are in for a long, hard and embarrassing reign at the BOTTOM of the pile.

The sad thing is that the counties that should be paving the way to success (Gwinnett, Cobb, and, uh, North Fulton) are instead finding new and improved ways to screw up. Go Georgia!

By Janine

August 27, 2007 12:58 PM | Link to this

I would also guess that there will be a decline. It seems that , as V says, more and more kids are taking the SAT [“Entire graduating classes of college-bound students!”],that alone will keep us at the bottom of the pile. In the AJC [I think Sat. or SUn]there was a section on football players who will be signing with colleges soon. For each it gave a GPA and and SAT score. Many , if not most,of them just didn’t go togehter. A 3.5 GPA does NOT go with an SAT score in the 800’s. Grade inflation is not helpful to anyone,and, IMHO, is institutional fraud and rampant DECEPTION!

By jim d

August 27, 2007 1:24 PM | Link to this

My guess is you won’t have any takers on this one.

By lynn d

August 27, 2007 1:33 PM | Link to this

I will take your bet… I suspect the scores will go up, but of course, that doesn’t mean the ranking will. I am not an optimist like my friend PSCXEB, but I think that schools are doing more and more practicing for the test. Research shows that practice, high quality at least, helps. So we will see.

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By decaturparent

August 27, 2007 1:39 PM | Link to this

I have a question (actually several questions). Where on the chain was the decision made that “everyone” needs to take the SAT. Is this something handed down from the state DOE? Is it just sort of a cultural “expected” thing to do? Is it just a coincidence that all of the districts decide to allow/encourage everyone to take the test?

Also, what is the real rationale for doing this? Is there a hope that some low achieving kid will get “lucky” on the SAT and score a 2000 just because he or she has good guesses - sort of like picking good lottery numbers?

Is it a politically correct thing?

Where was this decided and why? Also, how do other states get away with testing far fewer students?

By Dragonlady

August 27, 2007 2:01 PM | Link to this

Decaturparent: In many other states, the SAT is not required for college entrance. Instead the kids who are going to college take the ACT. Only the brightest kids in school who are applying to Ivy League colleges even bother to take the SAT. So you have the top half of 1% of the students taking the SAT—the rest take the ACT, whereas almost all of our students who are college bound (or who THINK they are) take the SAT.

This means, of course, that when you average all the scores together, in GA. you are averaging many, many scores, whereas in North Dakota, you are averaging only the scores of the very brightest kids in the school.

By Mark

August 27, 2007 2:08 PM | Link to this

Too many kids in Georgia take the SAT. We should only encourage students to take it if they are defintely going to college.

The SAT is an aptitude test…it can be aligned quite nicely to IQ. I’m not even sure schools have a hand in shaping a child’s IQ. It is predetermined before they enter school.

Why does the media always point out that “Georgia students scored an average of 1000 out of 1600” on the SAT? It isn’t that kind of a test where one could expect everyone to score perfectly. The results are normed to form a bell-shaped curve. If everyone made a 1600, the test would have to change so the bell shape could still be in place. It’s better to report the average score if you want to compare the IQ of Georgia students who took the test to the IQ of students nationwide who took the test. An SAT score of 1000 would translate to an IQ of 100. Half of the test takers then, theoretically, should score above 1000 and half should score below it.

By gary furman

August 27, 2007 3:30 PM | Link to this

The SAT is an aptitude test. It is a good predictor of college academic success. Student scores are influenced by the level of sophistication of the home life (determined largely by the educational and economic levels of parents), the level of scholastic rigor the student has experienced, and the degree to which the student is self-motivated.
Comparing average SAT scores from different states lacks validity unless very similar students are compared.

By JustMe

August 27, 2007 3:34 PM | Link to this

I would rather bet on the number of good issues for blogs that Bridget comes up with this year. This is not one of them. Having a blog on predicting the SAT rank is silly.

Why not wait until the scores come out and then discuss them?

By Dana from DOE

August 27, 2007 4:03 PM | Link to this

Decaturparent (and others)

The DOE does not require the SAT — it’s not our test. It’s the College Board’s test. We don’t administer it, develop it or even really report the scores.

Georgia has high participation, in great part, because of the HOPE scholarship. Not only do a lot of kids want to go to college, if they stay in state, they know they can afford it. As dragonlady pointed out, most of the colleges our students attend require the SAT, although most will also accept the ACT.

We have seen a huge increase in the number of students taking the ACT. 34 percent of our H.S. seniors took the ACT last year. Not sure how many of those are taking both ACT and SAT.

As for Mark’s comment — I want you to imagine that was YOUR KID being told not to take the SAT. If a student has dreams of going to college, we should encourage that, not discourage it. Sometimes that decision hasn’t been made when the student takes the SAT. Who are we to say they shouldn’t take it? (In fact, we can’t do it: Students can sign up for the SAT all on their own)

By SET

August 27, 2007 4:37 PM | Link to this

It will be interesting to see the SAT scores again but I doubt there will be much new. SAT is a time pressure test that highly correlates to IQ. Face it, people, it’s a national IQ test.

Most low IQ people won’t take the thing. In fact, by 12th grade the really low IQ people have removed themselves from the public schools already because it’s too problematic for them to be there. Some have already gotten themselves institutionalized by then and some are home with the babies.

Of those that do SAT test - we have the racial distribution thing again. Low income Asians will beat high income whites on the average. Low income whites will beat high income blacks on the average. Since Jewish test takers are not labeled Jewish they will inflate the white numbers.. Kind of amusing to me because back in the early 60’s there was so much animosity against Jews they were barred from joining the country clubs in CA - now they own them. Still even that group does not reproduce at rates high enough to prop up the SAT scores.

Back to point. The state scores are highly dependent on what ethnic mix a state happens to have at a given point of time. Thus CA scores are expected to decline as the whites flee CA for retreat states such as OR and WA and are replaced by Hispanics. Asians are not fertile enough to make up for the white exodus and the Hispanic invasion.

For any state to brag about how wonderful their POS urban public schools are doing because of this year’s SAT score is just silly. The numbers are too affected by who took the test that year.

Another thing. One doesn’t “dream” of college as much as “plan” for it.

By Janine

August 27, 2007 4:42 PM | Link to this

Dana of DOE..Glad to have you here…..Would you agree that Ga. needs to offer what we on this blog have called Another Path [other than college prep]for our students….and that pushing the idea that college is the only route to a successful career and making a contribution to sociey is not only deceptive but self defeating for our state? That would mean that high schools would offer a choice for students and their families in which the course offerings and requirements for diploma would not all be directed toward college prep. A student could in fact get a diploma that would prepare him for other careers that would not necessarily include higher math, sciences etc. that the college pret diploma requires. We have discussed this often,,,,especially in relation to the GA DROP-OUT issue.

By Janine

August 27, 2007 4:49 PM | Link to this

SET…off topic, but can’t resist ..CA wasn’t the only place Jews were barred. I shall never forget going to visit my college roommate in Coastal Ga. THere was a sign in front of the finest hotel that read “No dogs and no Jews”! Also, there was a limit on the number of Jewish applicants that would be accepted into one of our finest med schools right here in GA. I have read there is now an unspoken limit on the number of Asian applicants that are accepted to some Ivy League colleges.

By Ernest

August 27, 2007 4:59 PM | Link to this

Dana:

Good to see your input on this topic. I think someone mentioned a while back that many HS counselors encourage most students to take the SAT, even if they are not on a college prep track. If that is true, that has a significant impact on how GA is perceived. Despite what everyone says about not performing state to state comparisons, it is done. Who can measure the damage it has done economically to GA?

I would probably recommend more students take the ACT, especially those who are unsure about college and/or have not taken many college prep courses. I understand the content from the ACT maps closer to the actual curriculum in HS. Let the results from this help guide students in taking the SAT.

By SET

August 27, 2007 5:09 PM | Link to this

Janine, I have lots of memories of things like that because when my family migrated to CA along with their entire families and social circles, the local Jewish population seemed to be the first allies they ran into. Both groups had real problems with the local whites, and both groups intended to take power in this generation or the next. Now CA Jewish women dominate both our Senate seats and the Speaker of the House. Black Political power statewide has peaked and is receeding in favor of Hispanics.

Barry Goldwater ran for President on the right wing Republican ticket but had black staffers. Later as time went by, the alliances frayed and blacks go to the point that it was no longer felt that they needed to listen to advice political, financial, legal or whatever. Plus rival candidates ran for office. Michael Jackson fired his jewish lawyers, etc…

There were common themes in music, food, and power. We were into that far more than the WASPs.

There were Jewish Caps on school admission following WWII when the GI bill made it easier for men to go to college. The Caps were not effective any as more and more Jews changed their names and sailed through the caps.

I laughed when John Kerry and Madeline Albright piously claimed they had no idea they were Jewish until he ran for president and she was sec of state. But I have had the experience of telling friends they were Jewish who had no idea… It was obvious to me, but they couldn’t see it and their families were so busy being Catholic they didn’t bother to mention it.

And the common thing we all had is sticking it to the man… Go figure.

By lynn d

August 27, 2007 5:42 PM | Link to this

Dana of DOE — Simple solution that many other Southern states have implemented — require only the ACT for most state colleges. Georgia’s students do better on the ACT anyway.

To me one of the essential challenges facing the state is this silly SAT ranking — deemphasize the SAT and I betcha we would see more busineses relocating to GA almost over night.

By holdingAJCaccountable

August 27, 2007 6:22 PM | Link to this

The people who want to excuse Georgia’s abysmal SAT scores by saying a greater percentage of our students take it than those in other states are forgetting one thing: “at the bottom” is at the bottom no matter how you slice it.

And when you compare Georgia’s SAT scores only to those states where a larger percent of the students take the test, guess where we are?

Well, it’s not at the top; and it’s not in the middle; maybe our erstwhile Dept. of Education mouthpiece can explain to us if we aren’t “at the top” and we aren’t “in the middle” just where exactly are we that makes Cox want to jump up and down and tell us about the “wonderful” news?

By V for Vendetta

August 28, 2007 8:55 AM | Link to this

Oh please Dana. “Imagine that was YOUR student?” A little dramatic. The fact is, we NEED to be more honest with students and parents, especially when it’s in the best interest of the student.

You also mention the HOPE scholarship, one of the greatest, and simultaneously, most terrible things to ever happen to Georgia education. Not much of a leg to stand on.

I think a good dose of honesty would benefit students a heck of a lot more than pipe dreams and rays of sunshing blown up their butts. You can look at statistics, you can look at genetics (IQ), you can look at whatever figures you like, but the result it the same: NOT EVERY KID SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE. This is one of the fundamental problems with Georgia’s way of thinking (not to mention the nation).

One of my ultral-liberal college profs once told me that high school shouldn’t be for everyone. HIGH SCHOOL! He obviously understood the reality of the situation. Too bad Georgia doesn’t.

By SET

August 28, 2007 10:29 AM | Link to this

V for Vendetta is absolutely correct.

By Dana from DOE

August 28, 2007 5:08 PM | Link to this

I actually agree with you V: There should be an honest assessment of where a student is and what his or her future holds. And that should include whether a student is going to go to college.

But if a student wants to take the SAT and preserve that possibility of going to college — even if the possibility is slim — I don’t think anyone should get in his or her way.

Yes, it would be nice if our SAT ranking were higher. But not at the expense of dashing some kid’s aspirations to go to college. Not worth it.

By Parent

September 5, 2007 2:10 PM | Link to this

There’s a small city school district outside of Atlanta, that shall remain nameless, that used to give out two different SAT school codes to two separate groups of students. Those the school thought would do well and that would make the school look good in the overall school score would receive the real SAT code for their school supplied by those folks from the SAT group. The remaining group - who the school felt would not do so well, received another SAT code - evidently this one was a practice test code. How did we find out? Just a bit of old fashioned investigative work. Since the school is SO SMALL, several parents asked the kids which codes they were using and then watched how many students were reported in next year’s report. Funny, only 1/2 of the students tested were reported and the school’s scores were awesome.

Since finding this out, the school hired a new principal who did away with this unethical manipulation of test data. This principal evidently has ethics and morals, not at all like his predecessor and his predecessor’s boss who is still employed by the school district but claims to have not known of this practice. (This individual by the way has been investigated on two separate ethics charges by two different school systems - imagine that - some things never change).

The moral of this post - do SAT scores trully reflect our children’s knowledge or are they in many cases a great example (as noted above) of the unethical manipulation of test data by the adults in charge.. hmmm.

By SET

September 5, 2007 2:35 PM | Link to this

Parent: A high stakes testing leads to schools being closed and administrators being dismissed you will see more and more cooking of the books.

I remember back in the late ’60s the high school discouraging lower functioning students from taking the PSAT. Manipulation of testing is nothing new.