Comments on: Down Down Down, SAT Scores Fall http://www.classesandcareers.com/education/2009/09/02/down-down-down-sat-scores-fall/ Education & Career Advice and Tips Sat, 04 Feb 2012 04:42:34 +0000 hourly 1 By: Diane http://www.classesandcareers.com/education/2009/09/02/down-down-down-sat-scores-fall/#comment-4717 Diane Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:16:26 +0000 http://classesandcareers.com/education/?p=623#comment-4717 Look the fact is that American's throughout the world have a reputation for being "dumb." I have heard this in different countries that I have gone too. American students need to be learning more. The fact is that we have a very high drop out rate and students that never go onto earn a degree. Students in school need more resources and support. I recognize teachers, and the government can't do everything but it's a start. They need to raise the expectations and the resources that students need in order to receive a quality education. Oh and as for the SAT no one can argue that there is a lot of room for improvement. Granted these questions are difficult, but the fact that students even get points for writing their name and they still average a "C" is pretty disturbing. Oh and FYI the statistics you sent for the SAT only go through 2005. The SAT scores I was referring to as noted on www.msnbc.com show that the scores did increase in the late 1990s through 2004. However, since 2004 they have been decreasing. And I want to make sure that you understand one more time I really respect teachers and all the hard work they do. I just think that the government and even parents need to provide more resources and raise the standards. No one can argue that American Public Education is on the downhill and there is a lot of room for improvement. Look the fact is that American’s throughout the world have a reputation for being “dumb.” I have heard this in different countries that I have gone too. American students need to be learning more. The fact is that we have a very high drop out rate and students that never go onto earn a degree.

Students in school need more resources and support. I recognize teachers, and the government can’t do everything but it’s a start. They need to raise the expectations and the resources that students need in order to receive a quality education.

Oh and as for the SAT no one can argue that there is a lot of room for improvement. Granted these questions are difficult, but the fact that students even get points for writing their name and they still average a “C” is pretty disturbing. Oh and FYI the statistics you sent for the SAT only go through 2005. The SAT scores I was referring to as noted on http://www.msnbc.com show that the scores did increase in the late 1990s through 2004. However, since 2004 they have been decreasing.

And I want to make sure that you understand one more time I really respect teachers and all the hard work they do. I just think that the government and even parents need to provide more resources and raise the standards. No one can argue that American Public Education is on the downhill and there is a lot of room for improvement.

]]> By: Eric http://www.classesandcareers.com/education/2009/09/02/down-down-down-sat-scores-fall/#comment-4711 Eric Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:13:22 +0000 http://classesandcareers.com/education/?p=623#comment-4711 You may want to join our students in going back to the remedial courses you're recommending. For starters, you neglect to mention how SATs are scored, a piece of information pivotal to your argument. If a student doesn't answer a question, they get 0 points for it. However, if they answer a question and get it wrong, they are docked 0.25 to 0.5 points for the wrong answer. So let's assume a test that is 800 questions long and that a test taker answers all 800 questions. To score a 500, they have to get 240 wrong (getting 660 correct). Through the standard way of calculating a grade, which I believe you erroneously applied to the SATs, this would give them a square 70%. And, as I stated, this would be a little better still because some questions are penalized even more for wrong answers. Not great, but certainly better than the gloomy picture you painted of the 'average' student barely getting a D on the test. Now, of course, you have to realize that test takers do not always answer every question. The SATs are designed to be hard, so often a student will not have enough time to answer every question. Now any wrong answers due to accidental mistakes will hurt them even more. Even more importantly, though, you have to realize that this is not a test that every taker is meant to do well on. It is designed to be tough. There are questions that are purposefully inserted because they are hard or tricky (there are also questions that are accidentally so). If students were regularly scoring in the 600s to 700s, that probably wouldn't be an indication that our students are really smart, but rather that the test is too easy. Next you need to consider what, statistically, a dip in scores from one year to the next means: almost nothing. And when you're talking about a single point, that's really ambiguous. The test varies in difficulty from year to year. Some years it's fairly brutal, either due to a higher pool of difficult questions or perhaps due to some poorly worded questions (it's happened). It is not unreasonable to attribute a drop in this year's score compared to last year's due to something along those lines. So what you are looking for is a trend of downward momentum over many years, but in fact this is not the case either (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883611.html). I would be appalled at the "academics" applied to this topic (especially in a blog supposedly about education), but this really wasn't about education to begin with. It was a potshot at the government and how education is bad because of it, according to the author (as paragraphs four through six betray). One thing that was not mentioned is that the "Asian countries [that] keep squashing us" in education have systems that are also under government control, probably even more so. In short, the state of education is a complicated topic and to attribute its shortcomings so heavily to the government is to fail to understand the nuances of the problem and its sundry causes. For example, I believe the US is the only western country that is actually having a serious debate over the inclusion of intelligent design in the science curriculum. This is troubling as it shows confusion in the population over what science is and what science is not. We should also consider the emphasis we place on individuality and freedom, which will produce individuals naturally disinclined to submit to the system (especially when compared against most Asian nations). You may want to join our students in going back to the remedial courses you’re recommending. For starters, you neglect to mention how SATs are scored, a piece of information pivotal to your argument. If a student doesn’t answer a question, they get 0 points for it. However, if they answer a question and get it wrong, they are docked 0.25 to 0.5 points for the wrong answer.

So let’s assume a test that is 800 questions long and that a test taker answers all 800 questions. To score a 500, they have to get 240 wrong (getting 660 correct). Through the standard way of calculating a grade, which I believe you erroneously applied to the SATs, this would give them a square 70%. And, as I stated, this would be a little better still because some questions are penalized even more for wrong answers. Not great, but certainly better than the gloomy picture you painted of the ‘average’ student barely getting a D on the test.

Now, of course, you have to realize that test takers do not always answer every question. The SATs are designed to be hard, so often a student will not have enough time to answer every question. Now any wrong answers due to accidental mistakes will hurt them even more.

Even more importantly, though, you have to realize that this is not a test that every taker is meant to do well on. It is designed to be tough. There are questions that are purposefully inserted because they are hard or tricky (there are also questions that are accidentally so). If students were regularly scoring in the 600s to 700s, that probably wouldn’t be an indication that our students are really smart, but rather that the test is too easy.

Next you need to consider what, statistically, a dip in scores from one year to the next means: almost nothing. And when you’re talking about a single point, that’s really ambiguous. The test varies in difficulty from year to year. Some years it’s fairly brutal, either due to a higher pool of difficult questions or perhaps due to some poorly worded questions (it’s happened). It is not unreasonable to attribute a drop in this year’s score compared to last year’s due to something along those lines. So what you are looking for is a trend of downward momentum over many years, but in fact this is not the case either (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883611.html).

I would be appalled at the “academics” applied to this topic (especially in a blog supposedly about education), but this really wasn’t about education to begin with. It was a potshot at the government and how education is bad because of it, according to the author (as paragraphs four through six betray). One thing that was not mentioned is that the “Asian countries [that] keep squashing us” in education have systems that are also under government control, probably even more so.

In short, the state of education is a complicated topic and to attribute its shortcomings so heavily to the government is to fail to understand the nuances of the problem and its sundry causes.

For example, I believe the US is the only western country that is actually having a serious debate over the inclusion of intelligent design in the science curriculum. This is troubling as it shows confusion in the population over what science is and what science is not.

We should also consider the emphasis we place on individuality and freedom, which will produce individuals naturally disinclined to submit to the system (especially when compared against most Asian nations).

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