Georgia SAT results coming Tuesday

By Nancy Badertscher

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia educators learn Tuesday whether statewide scores on the SAT college entrance exam have improved – or at least leveled off after two years of decline.

Meanwhile, new data compiled by the state is raising questions about the relevance of the closely watched SAT, or its increasingly popular competitor, the ACT, to many Georgia high schoolers.

The College Board, which administers the SAT, plans to release an annual report Tuesday that will show how Georgia’s 2009 high school graduates fared on the exam. The report will also show whether their collective scores changed the state’s 47th place national ranking.

Last year, the average SAT score in Georgia was 1466, down from 1472 in 2007, and 45 points below the national average of 1511, out of a possible 2400. Only Maine, Hawaii, South Carolina and Washington, D.C., had lower scores in 2008. In 2006, the average score was 1477, according to the Georgia Department of Education Web site.

Georgia high schools devote extensive time and effort to preparing students for the SAT, an aptitude test, and the ACT, a curriculum-based exam. But a new report by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement suggests that neither exam may be that critical to a large number of high school graduates who decide to continue their education.

The report found that about 25 percent of those students go on to a technical college or a two-year college -- neither of which requires SAT or ACT scores.

Kathleen Mathers, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, said “too many kids are taking the SAT or ACT in Georgia.

“If a student doesn’t intend to go to law school, we certainly wouldn’t encourage him to take the LSAT,” Mathers said. “By the same token, kids who don’t intend to apply to colleges that require the SAT or ACT for admission shouldn’t take the SAT or ACT.”

Georgia Perimeter College, a two-year school, was ranked in the study as the second most popular post-secondary institution for the class of 2008, she said.

Waiting for the results

Data released last week showed no movement in the overall scores of Georgia high school seniors on the ACT, an exam focusing on the English, math, reading and science skills that students will need for college.

The state’s average composite score on the ACT was 20.6, out of a possible 36, and though that was unchanged from 2008, it bumped Georgia in the national rankings from 41st to 40th.

Forsyth County ranked first in the state on the ACT, with an average composite score of 23.1, and appears likely to be a top scorer on the SAT, as well.

At South Forsyth County High School, officials already know that the school’s average SAT score rose 37 points, from 1585 to 1622, lead counselor Jolie Kimmel said Monday.

“We know that’s the highest [average score] in our county and the highest for our school,” Kimmel said.

The results being released Tuesday will show how South Forsyth stacks up against other schools around the state, she said.

“There’s definitely anticipation and optimism,” Kimmel said.

This was the fourth year of the longer, redesigned version of the SAT. The new SAT has three sections, each worth up to 800 points. The revamped exam includes a writing section and more challenging reading and math questions.

Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), said SAT scores have to move more than a point or two up or down to be very meaningful. “If SAT scores for the high school class of 2009 continue to remain generally flat (both on average and for specific demographic groups) as well as lower than the scores obtained by the class of 2002, the last before ‘No Child Left Behind’ went into effect, that will be another piece of evidence that test-driven school ‘reform’ is not working,” he said.

SAT vs. ACT

The SAT has for years been the most widely used college entrance exam in Georgia. But state officials say Georgia is quickly becoming a “two-test state, with roughly 40 percent of college-bound students taking the ACT and about 70 percent taking the SAT.

At South Forsyth High, students who are looking ahead to college are encouraged to take both tests, said Kimmel, the counselor.

She said her school did a study and found that 30 to 40 percent of its students do better on the ACT than the SAT.

In Clayton County, which had some of the region’s lowest SAT scores for 2008, officials have spent the last year focused on two specific strategies for helping students prepare for the exam, said Charles White, the school system’s spokesman.

“The first was a semester-length SAT prep course offered at individual high schools that students could take as an elective,” White said. The course covered the three different areas of the test -- critical reading, math, writing, he said.

The second involved the counseling staff having face-to-face meetings with parents.

“The meetings served as training sessions, instructing parents on the use of free, online SAT preparation programs,” White said.

Sample SAT question

Part of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A.

About 35 percent of the world’s orange juice is produced by Florida, “comparing it with” nearly 50 percent produced by Brazil, the world’s largest orange producer.

A. comparing it with

B. but

C. whereas

D. although

E. compared with

E is the correct answer. It avoids the error of the original by removing the vague pronoun “it” so that the percentage of orange juice produced by Florida is directly compared with the percentage produced by Brazil.

Sample ACT question

A Voice of Her Own

Sandra Cisneros, perhaps the best known Latina

author in the United States, writes poems and stories

whose titles alone — “Barbie-Q,” “My Lucy Friend Who

Smells Like Corn,” “Woman Hollering Creek” — engage

potential readers’ curiosity. To the pleasure of her readers,

Cisneros’s work, which uses both English and Spanish, is

as interesting as the titles suggest.

A. NO CHANGE

B. potential, reader’s

C. potential, readers

D. potential readers

A is the correct answer