School-level SAT scores lead to praise, explanations

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Georgia’s students scored an overall 1,452, compared to the National average of 1,498. These are the top ten scores for schools with at least 100 test takers.

District School Test Takers Reading Math Writing Composite

Gwinnett Gwinnett School of Mathematics Science and Technology 138 635 667 615 1917

Fulton Northview High School 406 574 619 580 1773

Cobb Walton High School 607 581 592 568 1741

Muscogee Columbus High School 301 570 585 567 1722

Fulton Johns Creek High School 418 560 590 557 1707

Fulton Milton High School 588 563 576 558 1697

Cobb Alan C. Pope High School 406 563 566 551 1680

Fulton Alpharetta High School 484 548 571 553 1672

Forsyth South Forsyth High School 357 556 562 550 1668

Fulton Chattahoochee High School 401 549 574 544 1667

New SAT details released Thursday had some Georgia school districts bragging about eager students and hardworking teachers, while others were left to explain how disadvantages such as poverty dragged down their scores.

Most of the schools with top scores for the class of 2013 are familiar names: The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology had the second-highest average in the state, followed by Northview High in Fulton County and Walton High in Cobb.

Paul Brannon, the Northview principal, had the expected plugs for the deserving people involved in driving those high scores.

“We have the most amazing kids and our teachers work extremely hard,” he said.

That is surely true. It’s also true that the school enjoys the advantages of being in a well-off part of north Fulton and having an exceptionally low number of poor students. Eight percent qualified for free or reduced-price meals at the school.

Indeed, Fulton, which tied with Cherokee County for the second-highest SAT average in Georgia, enjoyed the lowest poverty rate among the big urban metro Atlanta districts. Less than half the students qualified for school meal subsidies. Cobb was the only other big neighboring district that could claim the same.

By comparison, DeKalb, which ranked 104th on the SAT list, had a 71 percent poverty rate. Its best-scoring school was Chamblee Charter High, in 19th place. Forty-two percent of students at that school live in poverty.

Interim Superintendent Michael Thurmond said demographics helped to explain the relatively poor performance of his district.

“The higher the percentage of economically disadvantaged students who take the test, the lower your score will be,” he said.

It’s unclear, though, whether a disproportionate number of poor students took the test in DeKalb, since the College Board didn’t release school district level economic profiles of test takers.

The SAT, administered by the College Board, is used to rank students for college admission. The test measures reading, writing and math, with a possible 800 points in each category for a possible total of 2,400.

Besides demographics, there are unquantifiable factors, like culture.

Walton High, a perennial high performer, maintained its reputation as a top-ranked school, coming in fourth with an average score of 1,741 out of a possible 2,400.

Greg Fleenor, who teaches advanced placement English literature there, said the teachers work hard because the students want them to.

The kids are “worldly,” he said, and benefit from parents who put a priority on education and expose them to educational opportunities outside school. The parents move into this expensive corner of Cobb because of the school’s reputation, he said, and their children are driven to learn.

The teachers are eager to oblige. Fleenor arrives before school to teach a 7:10 a.m. class during what’s called “zero” period, because there are enough students who want to cram in the extra learning time. He typically works until after 5 p.m., and that’s considered early.

“Teachers are probably in this building until 10 or 11 at night,” Fleenor said.

Metro Atlanta’s best performer was a charter school.

The poverty rate at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology — 34 percent — was more than 20 percentage points below the county average, but principal Jeff Mathews said the student body was a representation of the county as a whole since admission is lottery-based across Gwinnett.

Mathews credited his school’s average score of 1,917 to innovative teaching.

Physics and engineering teachers run a combined course, so students can apply physics concepts to real world cases. They design roller coasters that are graded by how long they can keep a ball rolling. And the teenagers develop games that they take to a nearby elementary school to teach fourth-graders about optics — the study of sight and the behavior of light.

Mathews noted that nearly all his seniors took the test, which makes the scores all the more impressive, since average performance typically declines as the percentage of test takers increases.

(The school with the best average score in the state was the Advanced Academy of Georgia in Carrollton, but only eight students took the test, a precariously small number on which to base an average for the purpose of ranking.)

Those on the ground — students — say demographics, or at least the will to invest in test prep, does make a difference.

Austin Webster, a freshman at Vanderbilt University, is among those who contributed to Northview High’s score of 1,773.

The 18-year-old took the test three times starting in her sophomore year. Each time, her score nudged up. She studied from a test prep book and got some tactical advice from a college friend who was home on vacation, but said she didn’t make near the investment in test prep that some of her peers did.

Most of her friends took SAT prep courses. “I didn’t have the full-fledged weekly tutoring that other kids had,” she said. “It’s almost like the kids who want to spend the most money practicing for the SAT do better, and not everyone has that much time and money.”