State's SAT scores post slight gain

Posted by 10216340 on August 27, 2008 at 6:04 a.m. (Suggest removal)

"Public school students fared worse than last year, while those who attend parochial and independent schools performed better."

So I guess this means that the private school students scored even better than the reported 2 point increase if they had to help make up the difference for the public school drop.

It would be interesting to know the average SAT and ACT scores for public school versus private school kids.

Hmmm.....this is certainly an argument for vouchers.

Posted by moonpie on August 27, 2008 at 6:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Ah thats great.

Day 2 of the democratic convention and the P&C has neary a story. Either they consider it un news worthy or offering no platform for discussion.??

Posted by wonderdog on August 27, 2008 at 7 a.m. (Suggest removal)

WOW - we are now up to number 48 in the country! Look out world, SC is moving up!

Posted by lou9 on August 27, 2008 at 7:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)

A 2 point increase. Wow, we're sure getting our tax dollars worth aren't we? Of course Rex blames most of it on more students taking the SAT, making the education department look bad. Well Mr. Rex, you and the rest of the educrats have been dumbing down the public education system for years and this is what you have created. This just strengthens the argument for school vouchers. They may not be the magic answer but anything is better than what we have been doing, which is nothing.

Posted by theronce on August 27, 2008 at 8:15 a.m. (Suggest removal)

It's been 40 years since I last took the SAT and 36 years since college. Considering how the written driving test has been dumbed down, I wonder how I could do if I could take it again.

Posted by commonsence on August 27, 2008 at 8:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Comparing public and private school scores is irrelevant and certainly not a justification for vouchers. If private schools had to take in any student who requests admission like public schools do, you would be reading a different story. Since private schools can deny kids with special needs, learning disabilities and low achievers, I would hope they are achieving well above the public schools.

Posted by Canadian_THGLIFE on August 27, 2008 at 9:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)

commonsence- don't forget the SAT is generally reserved for students who plan to attend additional education. For a lot of the groups you've mentioned this is not a viable or realistic option. While your comment certainly has merit, I would guess the difference is far less then you suggest.
Really though- 2 points? Is that a statistically relevant increase on a 2400 point scale? Seems like a feel-good story without any real merit.

Posted by eyfigueroa on August 27, 2008 at 10:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)

common: you assertion that private schools have an advantage over government schools is correct. They are allowed to screen potential students.

However, that does not negate the fact that vouchers are indeed needed in order to stimulate the competitive forces in the education system.

Right now the current "public" school system is a monopoly ran by a very bloated entity that has little or no oversight.

If my tax dollars were to follow my child to the school of my choice, I wholeheartedly believe that the current system would have no choice but to re-evaluate and repair.

I'm tired of having my daughter be subjected to the inability of the government to protect her from those students who either cannot or will not learn.

As far as students with true physical, mental, emotional and learning disabilities, no one is suggesting they don't deserve to be educated. With a voucher system, there would be for-profit agencies that will gladly educate them and more than likely do so better than the current system.

Posted by Canadian_THGLIFE on August 27, 2008 at 11:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)

ColdBeer- my comment was suggesting a self-imposed reservation system by people whom do not view college as the next step. I am unaware of non-educationally related benefits to taking the SAT.

ps- new username the other day- COLDESTBEER? someone suffers from a lack of creativity

Posted by STREETLAW on August 27, 2008 at 11:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)

All that cheating. All that money. And the best we can do is a slight increase? We need better liars in the system. We already have some world class manipulators.

Thinking of changing screen name to COLDERBEERTHANTHAT? Not very original you say. Hey, I went to school in South Carolina.

Posted by RTC on August 27, 2008 at 11:36 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I am curious about something. I have been told that SC allows every student to take the SAT, where other states only allow students with a certain GPA to take the test. If this is true, then that would account for lower scores in our state. Does anyone know if this is true?

Posted by jennirick on August 27, 2008 at 11:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)

Slow news day. Any word on why no one has reported on bus number three for Charleston county to have "engine" problems. I drove by a smoking bus yesterday morning in West Ashley. No students on board, look like they had already gotten them off. At this rate, there will be no need to report stats for SAT scores, cause all of our children will have burned up in a bus fire.

Posted by asdpe on August 27, 2008 at 12:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Yes, RTC, that's the case. And this is what Rex was referring to, lou9, in making the point that there is truly not a fair comparison between our state's result and that of some others who restrict the SAT's availability. But hey, any opportunity to bash schools, districts, teachers, etc shouldn't be missed, right? I knew I'd find a fair share of that bashing as soon as I saw this news story posted.

Posted by eyfigueroa on August 27, 2008 at 12:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)

RTC-legally no state has the right to keep anyone from taking the SAT. Perhaps they only pay for the test for students of a certain GPA.

My daughter took the test not through school but via the College Board website. We paid for it and she chose the location she wanted to use, coincidentally her high school was hosting the test.

The College Board is an independent entity that develops & administers the SAT. Schools cannot dictate as to who take the test as The College Board charges a fee. Now I do know that schools offer fee waivers for students on free/reduced lunch but that is a payment program between school systems and The College Board. It still does not mandate who gets to take the test.

Also kids who are home-schooled or in private schools take the SAT and they do so through The College Board even if they go to a govt. school to take it.

Posted by eyfigueroa on August 27, 2008 at 12:37 p.m. (Suggest removal)

RTC - In my opinion I feel that there are other underlying reasons why some states statistics are better than others.

As anyone throughout the US and also international students are legally able to take the test, I must assume that perhaps some school systems do not encourage or recommend the test to "certain" students. Now that is certainly a plausible idea.

The same goes for the ACT.

I've read somewhere that some colleges and universities are looking to other means to gauge a student's qualifications to enter. Like entrance exams, transcripts as well as essays.

I think the ACT and SAT are pretty reliable indicators of educational levels but not necessarily of intelligence levels. WHen the P&C had an article about the ACT scores of the various schools in the Tri-County area, the lines were definitely drawn by demographics.

Does anyone know if all schools within a County School District use the same curriculum or does each school get to choose it's own? I know in Berkeley County Stratford didn't offer some AP courses and kids had to drive over to Goose Creek or vice/versa to take some AP classes.

Posted by mademoiselle16 on August 27, 2008 at 12:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)

RTC - Yes, that is true and was alluded to in the story; it is a reason that SC performs lower than those states' whose gifted students only are allowed to take the SAT. One can also use the argument when comparing educational systems across the globe. Since the US's compulsory education laws require that all students go to school, our students' educational level would be less than European countries whose students are filtered out at a young age into "gifted" and "non-gifted" groups and educated thusly. For instance, non-gifted students are sent to vocational/technical schools to learn skills to become employed. Sadly, the American school system has no real vocational branch. If we did, I think it would help by weeding out those students who don't want to/can't learn and teaching them a useful skill that would benefit not only the student, but society as a whole. Unfortunately, I don't think that would ever happen, because that mentality is very "un-American".

Posted by RTC on August 27, 2008 at 12:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)

eyfig, thanks for the info. My kids took the SAT's at their high schools, and I do remember having to pay a fee.
I know that things have changed alot through the years. I attended private school and remember taking my PSAT's at another school, but I took the SAT's at my own school.

Posted by RTC on August 27, 2008 at 2 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Wow. I got three different replies at almost the same time.
I do find it kind of strange that my youngest child did not want to take the SAT's, and we were never contacted concerning this. I would have thought that his guidance counselor would have called or e-mailed. It was if they didn't care one way or the other. I suppose he was just another dispensible student.

Posted by Marianne0558 on August 27, 2008 at 2:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

I never took the SATs. I planned to go to tricdent tech after high school graduation, then transfer to a USC. It was cheaper for my parents than shoveling out a ridiculous amount of $ for the same classes.
Also, I was very bad with standardized testing.

Posted by MindBath on August 27, 2008 at 3:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The biggest difference between public and private school performance is the students who go there and the families who send them. Private schools do not get better scores because of the instruction they provide, but rather the students they accept (and the family support those students receive). This also accounts for our poor performance against other states (dumb people with families not as interested in education). If our teachers and our curriculum were the problem, we would have adopted the curriculum of a better performing state, hired out-of-state teachers, and poof... moved to the top.

For example, take Fort Dorchester and Stall, two public high schools just a few miles apart. The article shows that for 2008, FD students averaged 1499 and Stall students averaged 1197.

Now consider this, if the facilities, faculty, staff, curriculum, everything all stayed exactly the same at both schools, but all the students switched schools - what would happen?

Stall would average around 1499 and FD around 1197, that's what would happen. It's really that simple and it's laughable the money we spend trying to "fix" the schools.

Posted by guidedbystewart on August 27, 2008 at 3:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Great Post MindBath

Posted by lou9 on August 27, 2008 at 3:46 p.m. (Suggest removal)

asdpe - I was in no way bashing teachers. They are the ones in the system that catch hell from both sides. On one side is the school boards and administrators who do not support and protect them and on the other side is the students who do not want to be there and their parents who don't care what they are doing. The only ones I am bashing, however, is the superintendents, school board members, and administrators. They have their heads buried up a certain part of their anatomy, refusing to admit they have failed the teachers and the students who want to learn and they refuse to concede that change is needed. They consume the majority of the resources (taxpayer money) given to schools. Money that should be going into the classrooms, not to their bloated salaries and fringe benefits.

Posted by eyfigueroa on August 27, 2008 at 4:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)

mindbath: i must agree that parental involvement or lack thereof is the primary cause of poor performance in govt. schools. Private school parents consider education literally and figuratively an investment that must be nurtured and protected.

On a personal note my family's personal experience with church based schools was less than stellar and the secular schools that were more appropriate for my children were too expensive. That is why I allowed my children to go through government schools.

However the prevailing attitudes of administration and school boards of govt. school systems is also a contributing factor of failing schools. Fraud, waste and abuse of public funds and inadequate maintenance of facilities (as in rural schools in SC without clean/safe facilities) contributes to the problem.

Posted by iceman1978 on August 27, 2008 at 5:23 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Does every student take the SAT or only those who are planning on going to college?

Posted by 10216340 on August 27, 2008 at 5:25 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Just to clarify a point for some. No state or school can deny a student the opportunity to take the SAT or the ACT. Actually, schools have nothing to do with students taking the test other than they provide staff (as employees of the College Board/SAT or American College Testing/ACT) and space for the test. The SAT and ACT just find it more convenient to hire schools and school personnel to administer the test.

Now, a school might decide not to give a particular student the school code that identifies where they attend high school in an attempt to try and not have that student's scores attributed to their school (and possibly bring down that schools average). However, ALL registration is done through the ACT or SAT companies and is done either on-line or by paper application. Any student simply chooses their high school code (from the list provided in the regisration packet or on-line) and grids it into the application and they are identified as attending that particular school.

In addition, the student may choose not to identify where they go to school.

The long and short of it is......a student does not need permission or anything from a high school in order to take either test. They provide their address and the scores are attributed to the state at least (if not the school).

I know it sounds complicated but it's important to understand so that you don't think there are students out there being denied access.

Also, the only students that should take the tests are those planning on attending a college or university. The scores are not used for any other purpose. The military uses the ASVAB and many two-year colleges use their own or a different entrance exam.

Sorry for the lenght of this post.

Posted by MindBath on August 27, 2008 at 8:38 p.m. (Suggest removal)

The whole problem is one of perception. Year after year, SC scores on standardized tests, when averaged by state and ranked against other states, come in near the bottom. The variance of overall state average scores from the national average is not large, not nearly as large as the variance from our higher scoring and lower scoring schools within the state.

On it's own, it is not a problem at all. What I mean is, we have plenty of schools that sit at or above the national average. We have thousands upon thousands of students of our SC public school system who manage to score well above the national average and who get into good colleges, some even come from the "bad" schools. If the public school system were broken, this would not happen. A smart kid from a smart family can and will succeed in SC schools and go on to success in higher education. It all comes down to this. There are students who come from families that are very concerned with education and value it, those less so, and those who don't value it at all. The SC population just happens to be heavily skewed toward the lower end of that scale. Moreso than other states. Nothing we do with our school system will overcome the effect of that.

The way it becomes a problem is in areas like businesses unwilling to locate here due to the perceived problem. This is why I call it a problem of perception. The solution lies in making education more important to the larger SC population.

Posted by MindBath on August 27, 2008 at 8:48 p.m. (Suggest removal)

eyfig, I had the same problem when my kids were in the early grades. We put them in private religious schools and found that, in two different schools, there were many completely unqualified teachers. We had better success when we switched them to public schools. Results, as they say, may vary I suppose...

I will point out these were not Catholic schools, but simply local church-based schools. I say that because, from what I have seen, the Catholic schools are well-established and seem to be very good. This is based on observation only, I have never attended nor have I sent any of my kids to Catholic schools. I do know many people who have though.

Posted by carolinadude on August 27, 2008 at 8:49 p.m. (Suggest removal)

2008 SAT Scores Show Declines for SC Public Education; Achievement Gap Widening

South Carolina’s public schools showed a sharp drop in 2008 average SAT scores, according to an S.C. Policy Council analysis of the 2008 College Board report released today. While independent high schools showed a gain of 41 points, the average SAT scores for public high schools dropped five points this year from 1456 to 1451.

South Carolina’s composite SAT score of 1461 remains the lowest in the south, and is 50 points below the national average. The number of public school districts and schools that failed to exceed the national average also increased in 2008. Just eight districts had average test scores that exceeded the national average this year. That is down from 10 districts in 2007. The number of schools exceeding the national average also dropped from 42 to 40.

Meanwhile, the achievement gap between African-American and white students increased by 11 points. African-American test scores dropped by five points – from 1255 to 1250 – while white students improved by six points to 1541. The resulting gap leaves a 291 point gap in test scores for the state’s two largest ethnic categories.

“This year’s numbers clearly show the need for fundamental education reform in South Carolina’s education system,” said Policy Council President Ashley Landess. “Despite more than $900 million in new K-12 education funding over the past decade, South Carolina’s public school students have shown just a one percent improvement in average SAT scores since 2001 and are not competitive with their regional and national peers. Considering South Carolina has the lowest graduation rate in the nation – just 58 percent of ninth graders graduate four years later – students remaining in school by the time the SAT is given should be the state’s best and brightest. Yet South Carolina continues to rank at the bottom, and the gap is increasing in several key categories.”

Among the key findings of the College Board’s 2008 SAT results for South Carolina:

Public school SAT scores dropped
Public school SAT averages dropped five points to 1451. Independent schools improved 41 points to 1546. Overall, South Carolina private schools averaged 106 points higher than their public school peers. South Carolina’s two point overall gain is entirely the result of private school SAT improvement.