Different takes on the SAT

MCPS celebrated rising average SAT scores, issuing this press release a few days back.   However, a precipitous drop in participation  during the 2010 school year has some questioning the conclusions that should be drawn from the data.   Lisa Gartner of the Washington Examiner has an interesting take.

The school district saw a 38-point jump in SAT scores this year, with the biggest gains among African-American and Hispanic students. But participation overall dropped about 8.5 percent, with a 15.6 percent drop in participation among blacks and 17.7 percent among Hispanics, groups who traditionally do not perform as well on tests.

One would expect high SAT averages to be accompanied by increasing numbers of students earning a college ready score of 1650.  Curiously, the number of students who have received college ready scores in MCPS has remained flat over the last several years despite a small rise in the number of graduates over those same years.

Data from: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/pdf/Class2010SAT-MCPS-MD-Nation-9-13-10-final.pdf