Under the (front page) headline, “Oregon SAT’s lost some ground”, the Oregonian (Sept. 15, 2011) tells us:
Oregon’s high school seniors are testing increasingly lower on the annual SAT’s, based on results released Wednesday by the College Board.
Average test scores for Oregon’s high school class of 2011 were the lowest in a decade, though they were good enough to keep Oregon scores above the national average, ranking 22nd…
In Oregon 15,763 public high school students, or 89 percent of the state’s total number of possible test takers, completed the exam. This year, they scored lower in each category compared with 2010 averages…
Andrea Morgan, an educational specialist at the Oregon Department of Education, said the SAT shouldn’t be overinterpreted. The test is not a barometer of college readiness or how well the state educates high school students overall, she said. Many colleges and universities use SAT scores and high school gradepoint averages to gauge a student’s possible performance level. But it’s not everything…
Morgan blames the decrease this year to the larger number of students taking the exam. This year, 18,754 students took the SAT, about 56 percent of the state’s high school graduates according to the department. In 2010, 18,461 students took the exam, or about 54 percent of the high school graduates.
Morgan and others at the education department went out of their way to point out a potential gold lining: an uptick in the percentage of minority and underperforming students who took the test – 25 percent compared with 23 percent in 2010.
“If the state is increasing the number of minority and underperforming students taking the SAT, then that is a positive,” said Sue Levin, executive director of the Oregon chapter of Stand for Children, the educational advocacy nonprofit…”
Indeed, in 2011, more Latino, African American and Asian students took the SAT test. The increase in the number of Asian students, in particular, was most notable: a 168-person jump. Asian students also performed comparably to white students in the three categories as a whole…
“We’re going to have higher expectations now,” Morgan said. “We’ll see an increase in these scores as more students are expected to meet that higher standard.”
The above article is so full of misleading statements, and hogwash, that it would be no surprise if The Oregonian chose to leave it out of their webpage (the above is from the printed edition) for fear of the ridicule it would attract.
Yes, it’s true that SAT scores are not “everything”. One factor that is much more important, in deciding who gets into prestigious schools and who does not, is race. The Center for Equal Opportunity, for example, recently found that:
The odds ratio favoring African Americans and Hispanics over whites was 576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively, using the SAT and class rank while controlling for other factors. Thus, the median composite SAT score for black admittees was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and the Latino median SAT score was 100 points lower. Using the ACT, the odds ratios climbed to 1330-to-1 and 1494-to-1, respectively, for African Americans and Hispanics over whites.
So yes, it is true that SAT scores are not “everything”. What about the explanation given for why this year’s scores are lower than last years – More students took the test? Left unexplained is how, exactly, a larger sample size necessarily results in lower scores. By this reasoning, countries with the most people should also be the dumbest. China should be an intellectual dwarf compared to Haiti.
Later in the article, it is revealed that there is a “gold lining” (a “silver lining” is not good enough): more minority, and underperforming, students took the test. Now I know I’m going out on a limb here, but is it possible that this might have something to do with the lower average test scores? Yes, it’s true that a lot of Asians took the test this year – but this wouldn’t have an appreciable effect on the average score since “Asian students also performed comparably to white students”. What would have an appreciable impact is, of course, the black and Hispanic test-takers.
But not to worry! As expectations get higher, we’ll see an increase in scores in the near future. But of course. There is little doubt that test scores will improve – by any means necessary.
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I live in oregon too and it’s obvious the mestizos coming from mexico/pseudo-mexico(California) are fucking up the standardized test scores – along with schools not implementing what I consider to be good policy. I don’t believe the education system should be a daycare system for delinquents.
Also OSU is/was a possible choice for me but one thing that really annoys me about the college is the “diversity, power and discrimination” requirement in their curriculum.
It’s beyond me how they think I should pay to be force fed social ideologies which are intended to fuck me over.
Maybe if you passed out leaflets on the desks discussing the links between the class, PC and the Frankfurt school, the administrators might get the message. 🙂
I find it amazing how common the knowledge is these days about the origins behind PC and the purpose behind it. Back when I was at school and took those odious classes, no one had any idea. Now you can go to forums that aren’t even related to politics and you will see discussions about that subject. I think we are witnessing the high water mark of PC.
To be fair, a larger proportion of students taking the test does tend to lower scores, since it usually means that more marginal, lower-aptitude students, who otherwise would not have taken the test, become represented in the sample. I think Steve Sailer used that to explain why Black-White gap in SAT scores actually increased in the last decade despite all the hype about “closing the gap”. An overemphasis on sending blacks to college has led to more marginal, even lower performing blacks taking the SAT, dragging down the black average (though it should be noted that this really just removes the advantage that blacks had before, in that a larger proportion of their population did not take the SAT at all than whites, and this non-test taking proportion tended to comprise the dumbest blacks).
Yes, that’s kind of what I meant in the next paragraph. A larger sample, per se, would not lower the scores. But if that larger sample includes inferior performers, such as NAM’s and struggling whites, that will lower the scores. They make it sound as if a larger number of test takers, even of the same caliber, makes the scores lower.
Now that you mention it, it is striking how they mention the “gold lining”, in the same article in which they blame the falling scores on “larger numbers of students taking the test”, without making the obvious connection that the larger number of NAMs taking the test is probably the major reason for the falling scores. To me, it was implied, but of course that’s because I’m a regular crimethink offender. I suppose I’ve become so inured to the dishonesty of educrats and the media left that I didn’t even notice this particular sleight of hand on their part.
Great post jewamongyou.
The “gold lining” in this article is that they mention race at all. It reminds people who are paying the least bit of attention that there is an achievement gap based on race that persists. Eventually some people will be forced to consider a genetic cause.
When they stop mentioning race at all then we should be worried. Of course they will always have race-centric policies that favor the muds, but they will stop reporting the racial aspects of academic achievement the same way they avoid mentioning the race of perps in crime reporting.
This is very typical denial on the part of liberal whites. In several of my comments on this blog, I’ve opined that most liberals don’t actually believe what they profess to believe about race. Perhaps liberals in places that have sparse or non-existent populations of black people really have chugged the Kool-aid and believe every misconception that the left holds on race. Certainly the video of the young Israelis working with the African refugee children seems to support that.
However, the extent to which lefty journalists go to cover up racial crime stats and the fact that blacks, as a group, fall short of whites intellectually, leads me to believe that most of them know what time it is. Surely this includes the writer who penned the featured story. It’s obvious.
The question: what motivates the libs that know better to continue with the charade? My guess is that no one has found a constructive way to broach the topic publicly….. yet. It needs to be done, though. While I’m at it, what moron at MSNBC came up with the idea of giving Al Sharpton his own show? I’ve sure he’s become an embarrassment to their network by now. He’s REALLY dumb.