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Dropouts Seek a Boost From Equivalency Exams Numbers Seeking a Degree Swell -- But Gains May Be Limited A growing number of Americans are taking high school equivalency tests in their hunt for any leg up in a bleak labor market. Adult-education centers across the country report backlogs and waiting lists for prep courses cramming dozens of topics and years of lessons into weeks or months. But the potential for a better job and pay that drives many to seek a General Educational Development diploma comes with a caveat: The certificate generally is of limited value unless students use it...

The word median is statistical: it is the point at which 50% of the observations of a thing are smaller and 50% larger. For example, according to the CIA Factbook, the median age of U.S. citizens is 37 years; thus, half the population is younger than 37, half older. Sometimes, as in Murray’s case, and in this review, the median is synonymous with average (sometimes the later implies numerical mean; the median and numerical mean are often nearly or practically equal). We accept that some people naturally excel at sports and that others, no matter the purity of their souls,...

<p>High-school students' performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam fell slightly, and the score gap generally widened between lower-performing minority groups and white and Asian-American students, raising questions about the effectiveness of national education reform efforts.</p> <p>Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.</p>

Through the early 1990s and early 2000s, average scores on the SAT college entrance exam moved steadily upward. Now, for the last five years, they've been drifting back down. The reason? Unlike on the multiple-choice sections of the test itself, there's no one right answer. But a big factor is the larger, more diverse group of students taking the tests, combined with a widening scoring gap between the best-performing groups and those whose numbers are growing fastest. Results released Tuesday show the high school class of 2009 earned a combined score of 1509 on the three sections of the exam,...

The soaring costs of a college degree are prompting colleges to consider a three-year degree program. Britain has long granted a degree for three years of college. I would like to suggest a one-year degree program. And I don’t mean an associate’s degree. Here are some hard facts most colleges will never tell you and most parents could not tolerate hearing. The general requirements of the first two years at most colleges are what high school should have been. That is what junior should have learned had he not been busy getting high, getting drunk, and being socially promoted. Better...

Loyola College's Jesuit tradition calls for it to serve students who did not start with every economic, social or geographic advantage. Widespread research, meanwhile, shows that standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT favor those from privileged backgrounds and that such tests are less predictive of college success than excellent grades and a rigorous course load in high school. So, in search of a more diverse and accomplished student body, Loyola has joined a growing list of colleges and universities that no longer require applicants to submit an SAT or ACT score. ... Test-optional policies might calm the widespread...

It's fair to say the tide of elite opinion now runs solidly against the use of the SAT in college admissions. Last fall, the National Association of College Admissions Counselors (NACAC) released a report calling on its members at last to act on their skepticism by taking steps to decommission the test for use at their schools. When the report was presented at the group's convention last September, the only complaints were that it didn't go far enough in condemning the test. "It's a lousy test," one NACAC member said heatedly on the convention floor. "It's destructive of what all...

In the 1990s, several SUNY campuses chose to raise their admissions standards by requiring higher SAT scores, while others opted to keep them unchanged. [...] Thus, by comparing graduation rates at SUNY campuses that raised the SAT admissions bar with those that didn’t, we have a controlled experiment of sorts that can fairly conclusively tell us whether SAT scores were accurate predictors of whether a student would get a degree. The short answer is: yes, they were. Consider the changes in admissions profiles and six-year graduation rates of the classes entering in 1997 and 2001 at SUNY’s 16 baccalaureate institutions....

Baylor University's policy of paying already admitted and enrolled students to retake the SAT test so the school possibly can use the improved scores to pursue a higher spot in the America's Best Colleges ranking is causing a lot soul searching in academia. The New York Times, Inside Higher Education, and Chronicle of Higher Education have all weighed in with stories that criticize the practice. The Baylor Lariat, Baylor University's student newspaper, which broke the story, has written extensively on the controversy surrounding Baylor's policy of paying students a $300 book credit at the school store for retaking the SAT...

A commission convened by some of the country’s most influential college admissions officials is recommending that colleges and universities move away from their reliance on SAT and ACT scores and shift toward admissions exams more closely tied to the high school curriculum and achievement. ... It encourages institutions to consider dropping admission test requirements unless they can prove that the benefits of such tests outweigh the negatives. ... Mr. Fitzsimmons’s group, which was convened by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, also expresses concerns “that test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment.”...

High-school students' performance on SAT college-entrance exams stalled, and the gap widened between low-scoring minority groups and the overall population, raising questions about the quality of teaching in U.S. schools. Average scores for the class of 2008 were 502 for the critical-reading section, 515 for mathematics and 494 for writing. Each of the three numbers was identical to the averages in 2007, meaning combined scores remain at the lowest level so far in the current decade. The reading scores of the past two years were the lowest since 1994. Math represented the worst showing since 2001. Each section is judged...

For the second consecutive year, SAT scores for the most recent high school graduating class remained at the lowest level in nearly a decade, according to results released Tuesday. But the College Board, which owns the exam, attributes the lower averages of late to a more positive development: a broader array of students are taking the test, from more first-generation college students to a record number of students — nearly one in seven — whose family income qualifies them to take the test for free.

Last month, Wake Forest dropped the SAT and ACT as an entrance requirement, becoming the only top-30 national university with a test-optional policy. This step away from standardized tests will help us and other institutions of higher education move closer to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity. Our decision to reevaluate our admissions policy grew out of a close look at the state of higher education and some long, hard thinking about the kind of university we want Wake Forest to be. For several years, a growing body of research has made clear that America's top colleges and...

The revamped SAT, expanded three years ago to include a writing test, predicts college success no better than the old test, and not quite as well as a student’s high school grades, according to studies released Tuesday by the College Board, which owns the test. “The changes made to the SAT did not substantially change how predictive the test is of first-year college performance,” the studies said. College Board officials presented their findings as “important and positive” confirmation of the test’s success. “The SAT continues to be an excellent predictor of how students will perform,” said Laurence Bunin, senior vice...

-- Woman says SATC inspired her to have sex at 14 -- ABC News.com is currently highlighting a Sex and the City- inspired story about a woman who says the HBO series inspired her to start having sex when she was 14. Will the networks news shows pick up the story or will it remain an "internet only" feature, not likely to be seen by a broad audience? The question is worth asking because ABC's Good Morning America was one of the first network morning news shows to salivate over last week's London opening of Sex and the City: The...

Goodbye SAT? by: Bethany Stotts, May 28, 2008 Criticisms of the flaws of standardized testing abound in American education circles, be it for allegations of racism in the ACT and SAT’s or complaints about No Child Left Behind’s unaccountable “accountability.” Now FairTest, a non-profit opposed to the “misuses and flaws of testing practices,” has advanced a media campaign heralding Wake Forest University’s recent choice to become “test-optional” as the harbinger of a national trend. Both Smith College and Wake Forest University announced their switch to test-optional admission policies this month, but WFU’s crossover is exceptional due to its rank as...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Wake Forest University will no longer require applicants to take the SAT and ACT exams, boosting a movement to lessen the importance of standardized tests in college admissions. The Winston-Salem school, which admitted just 38 percent of its 9,000 applicants for this fall, is the latest in a string of colleges that no longer require standardized tests. Officials there say the scores are not the best predictor of academic potential. Most other colleges that have dropped standardized testing have not been highly selective and accept most, if not all, qualified applicants. The most prominent and selective...

The world gets more competitive every day, so why would California's education elites want to dumb down their public university admissions standards? The answer is to serve the modern liberal piety known as "diversity" while potentially thwarting the will of the voters. The University of California Board of Admissions is proposing to lower to 2.8 from 3.0 the minimum grade point average for admission to a UC school. That 3.0 GPA standard has been in place for 40 years. Students would also no longer be required to take the SAT exams that test for knowledge of specific subjects, such as...

...To earn an A in Fairfax, it takes a score of 94 to 100. In Montgomery, it takes a score of 90 or higher. Standards for grading in the two counties, including bonus point calculations, are so out of sync that it appears possible for a Fairfax student to earn a 3.5 grade-point average for the same work that gets a Montgomery student a 4.6 GPA. Parents nationwide are increasingly frustrated with wild variations in grading systems that, they say, are costing their children thousands of dollars in merit-based scholarships and leaving them disadvantaged in college admissions. [snip] While suburban...

Steven Colbert recently had a segment on college rankings. Colbert expressed disappointment that his alma mater, Dartmouth, did not rank well in the Washington Monthly rankings of college effectiveness. Washington Monthly focuses on the graduation rates of low-income students. Colbert complained that Dartmouth has plenty of social mobility, as you could enter a plutocrat and graduate an oligarch. Despite the lighthearted treatment, a serious issue surrounds the issue of the perverse incentives created by the U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) rankings. Inputs dominate the USNWR rankings--how much money the universities have, and the SAT scores of incoming students, etc....

Regular readers of this space know that MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski is one of our favorites, serving up heaps of grist for our mill with her regular injections of liberal opinion into her newsreading on "Morning Joe." Here's a recent example. We'd been searching for an apt nickname for Brzezinski, and as of this morning, Mika herself has supplied one. Meet 'Bubbles' Brzezinski. Mika was reading headlines from the morning's crop of newspapers, when she came across an item from the Boston Globe. MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Boston Globe: "Many colleges ignore SAT writing test." I find this very interesting because SATs were...

Average SAT scores at lowest since 1999 By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer The class of 2007 averaged the lowest math and reading SAT scores since 1999, the College Board reported Tuesday. Last spring's high school seniors scored on average 502, out of a possible 800 points, on the critical reading section of the country's most popular college entrance exam, down from 503 for the class of 2006. Math scores fell three points from 518 to 515. The declines follow a seven-point drop last year for the first class to take a lengthened and redesigned SAT, which included higher-level math...

For most high school students who want to attend an elite college, the SAT is more than a test. It is one of life’s landmarks. Waiting for the scores—one for verbal, one for math, and now one for writing, with a possible 800 on each—is painfully suspenseful. The exact scores are commonly remembered forever after. ... The pivotal analysis was published in 2001 by the University of California (UC), which requires all applicants to take both the SAT and achievement tests (three of them at the time the data were gathered: reading, mathematics, and a third of the student’s choosing)....

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compiles loads of statistics on education. The NCES "Digest of Education Statistics" Table 136 shows average SAT scores by student characteristics for 2001. Students who select education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any major (964). Math majors have the highest (1174).

In a fourth of the state's high schools, less than 60 percent of seniors took the SAT last year, with the rest cutting themselves off from the chance to gain admission to most US colleges... ...Massachusetts takes pride in its high SAT participation -- 79 percent of graduating seniors took the test last year, one of the highest rates in the country. But, according to the Globe analysis of nearly 330 high schools with SAT scores in the state, more affluent cities and towns are responsible for much of that accomplishment. Schools such as Weston, Winchester, and Wayland tested 100...

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

Los Angeles County prosecutors today filed hate crimes charges against eight black teenagers accused of beating up three white women on Halloween night in a case that has startled and divided Long Beach. Authorities said they took the action after concluding that the teens attacked and beat the women in the upscale Bixby Knolls area because they were white. The case has been the subject of a wrenching public dialogue over the last few weeks in the racially diverse city of 460,000, with civil rights groups like the NAACP condemning the teenagers' alleged actions and the city holding a public...

Many on the education beat puzzle over why the scores on the two leading college entrance exams differ so markedly. In a nutshell, ACT scores are up while SAT scores are down. The mystery is easily solved: the ACT is an easier test. For example, knowing where to place a comma and how to work an algebraic word problem puts you in the upper echelon of ACT test takers. For the SAT it is a floor. Against that backdrop, the losses and gains on the respective tests are not that earth-shaking: the ACT scores are up a point and the...

Parents and teachers call him St. Paul's low-key whiz kid. Jake Heichert grew up spurning studying, sleeping through the occasional exam — and, most recently, earning a rare pair of perfect scores on the ACT and SAT. Last week, his family sat around their living room, wondering how it all happened. Rich and Susan Heichert's only child received a 2400 on his SAT college assessment test in May. In February he scored a 36 on his ACT. He earned perfect 5s on his Advanced Placement tests in chemistry, U.S. history, and government and politics. Oh, and calculus, Jake added. Almost...

While the average reading and math scores on the SAT fell again this year, the test results showed a new gain for girls. For the first time in a generation, girls outperformed boys on one section of the exam, edging them out by 11 points on the writing portion of the test. ... Neuroscientists say, in general, that girls' brains may be better wired for the demands of open-ended essay questions than those of their male counterparts. "They tend to have better attention spans, and that is something that the essay question demands," said Dr. Jay Selman at the Columbia...

SAT Scores See Biggest Decline Since 1975 The high-school class of 2006 suffered the biggest drop in SAT scores in more than three decades -- a development that may raise more questions about the recently revamped exam than the students who took it. The College Board, the New York nonprofit that gives the admissions test, says scores in critical reading -- formerly known as verbal -- fell by five points to 503, out of 800 possible points. Math scores slipped two points, to 518, also out of 800 points. The combined decrease of seven points is the biggest since 1975,...

The high school class of 2006 recorded the sharpest drop in SAT scores in 31 years, a decline that the exam's owner, the College Board, said was partly due to some students taking the newly lengthened test only once instead of twice. Fatigue wasn't to blame, the College Board insisted, even though this year's class was the first to take a new version of the exam which added an essay. It now takes an average of three hours and 45 minutes to complete the test, not counting breaks, up from three hours previously. The results come several months after numerous...

A perfect score on the American College Testing exam is rare enough. Same goes for perfection on the SAT Reasoning Test. Acing both? No statistics are available on how many students manage that feat, but it's a safe bet that Bishop Carroll High School senior Jakub Voboril doesn't have a lot of company. "Suffice it to say, it's a very, very small number," said Brian O'Reilly, a spokesman for the College Board, which administers the SAT. Voboril, 17, learned last month that he had scored a 36 on his ACT, which he took in June. His perfect score, one of...

Colleges across the country are reporting a drop in SAT scores this year. I've been tutoring students in New York City for the SAT since 1989, and I have watched the numbers rise and fall. This year, though, the scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200 to 800). Colleges and parents are wondering: Is there something wrong with the new test? Or are our children not being taught what they should know? Before 1994, the verbal section of the SAT was about...

Officials at George Mason University in Fairfax announced yesterday that the school will allow some high-achieving students to apply for admission without submitting SAT scores, joining a growing list of colleges that are moving away from requiring applicants to take the standardized test. Admissions officials said high school students who rank in the top 20 percent of their class and have a grade-point average of 3.5 or better can apply without submitting SAT scores. Instead, the students will be required to submit two extra letters of recommendation from their teachers and will have to write an essay. Andrew Flagel, George...

“Teaching to the test” is a common complaint of public school teachers whose students have an increasingly difficult time passing such examinations with the passage of every school year. “Teach to the test, please,” Richard Ferguson of the ACT advises, “because the skills we are measuring are the skills that are needed.” Ferguson spoke at a conference at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel here in which the ACT released its new report, which is entitled “Ready to Succeed: All Students Prepared for College and Work.” The ACT that Ferguson heads administers one of the two most widely-used college entrance exams in...

Educators who oppose standardized testing and vouchers claim to have the best interests of students at heart but it is a claim worth examining. “The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has promoted high-stakes testing for school accountability,” Monty Neill of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing writes. “Its claim was that without ‘accountability,’ the public will abandon public education, and that the use of standards and tests would lead to educational improvement.” “This was never a good argument, though it appeared to address the justifiable anger directed by racial minorities and low-income communities against second-class educational opportunities.” Fair...

BOSTON - The College Board disclosed Wednesday that 27,000 SAT college entrance exams missed being rechecked following the initial discovery of scoring problems, with the result that another 375 students were given incorrectly low marks. In a news release, the College Board said that last week it asked Pearson Educational Management, which scores the exam, to confirm all 495,000 October tests had been rescored; that request followed an earlier oversight in which 1,600 exams were overlooked. Last weekend, Pearson notified the College Board that 27,000 tests from the pool of October exams still had not been re-evaluated. They have since...

College admissions offices scrambled Wednesday to reconsider applications after learning they had received incorrect SAT scores for about 4,000 students who took the exam last October. Some in the field criticized the College Board, owner of the exam, for failing to disclose the problem until so late in the admissions season. College officials said they expected few admissions decisions would be changed, but they were taking a second look at applicants whose scores were reported incorrectly. Generally, SAT scores are only one factor schools consider, but they can be critical in admissions to particular programs or eligibility for merit-based scholarships....

Palm Beach County, Fla., created the controversial "butterfly ballot" in the 2000 presidential election that reportedly confused more than 1,000 Gore-Lieberman voters such that they wound up marking their ballots for a minor-party candidate. In February 2006, local education officials told the Palm Beach Post that too many of the county's high school students apparently knew answers on the statewide comprehensive test but were incorrectly marking the answer sheets. The multiple choice questions require only one circle to be darkened on the sheet, but other questions require darkening digits of an actual numerical answer, apparently bewildering students into darkening too...

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. (CP) - Locked-out CBC employees are blocking a satellite truck from driving to Signal Hill in St. John's where the network had planned to stage live broadcasts Friday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Terry Fox's historic run. The union that represents the employees is accusing the employer of using "scab labour." CBC management has denied the allegation, arguing the employees taking part in the broadcast are employed by an independent production company contracted to do the show. However, the St. John's local of the Canadian Media Guild issued a statement Wednesday saying said it would treat...

The high school class of 2005 earned the highest-ever marks on the math portion of the SAT, a modest change that continues the steady 25-year trend of improvement on the country's most popular standardized college entrance exam. Significant gaps between racial groups remain, however, and officials said they are troubled by the comparative lack of progress in scores on the test's verbal section. Last year's seniors averaged 520 out of a possible 800 on the math portion, 2 points higher than the class of 2004. Average scores on the verbal section were unchanged at 508, according to results released Tuesday...

Here's an interesting story about the SAT. As of a couple of years ago, a new test was introduced: the Reasoning test. There are five topics on the SAT Reasoning Test: Critical Reading, Math, Writing, Multiple Choice, and an Essay. However, the topic I want to show you is the Essay. Specifically, my own.

Student has all the answersJunior who conquered new SAT 'just has a history of being perfect'09:27 PM CDT on Friday, April 22, 2005By APRIL KINSER / DallasNews.com Erin Yu had to look twice as she checked her SAT score online last week. A perfect score – 2400 – beamed from the computer screen next to her name. "I was like, 'Oh, my God!' " said Erin, a 17-year-old junior at Plano Senior High School. "I was in a good mood for the whole day." Erin was the only student in North Texas to ace the new college entrance exam, one...

Holy Cross College is dropping the SAT as an admissions requirement, apparently in the name of boosting ethnic diversity. I disagree with this decision. Not only is it a capitulation to the notion that blacks and Hispanics are somehow unable to get high SAT scores (which is politically correct bigotry, in my book), it also plays into the conspiracy theory that the test is somehow inherently biased against blacks and Hispanics. As Harvard professors Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom have pointed out, Asians tend to do better than whites on the SAT; if the creators of the test were deliberately trying...

April 4 issue - It's lunchtime in Iowa City, and after a bite of her veggie sandwich, Wendi Winkie starts reading student papers. But these aren't just any classroom essays—they're from the new SAT, which launched in March with a new writing section. One of the questions—"Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today?"—is prompting creative answers. They range from Thoreau to vacuum cleaners. One essay argues that creativity is needed in the advertising world, because we see the same commercials for male-enhancement drugs. Winkie sits up, chuckles and gives the essay a 5 on a 6-point scale....

AMBRIDGE, Mass. IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits. Advertisement "It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the...

BERKELEY, Calif. - A University of California faculty committee is challenging the National Merit Scholarship Program, saying the way it uses the PSAT to determine eligibility is unfair. The committee is asking UC's campuses and systemwide officials to rethink their participation in the program. Michael T. Brown, committee chairman, said faculty object to the program's reliance on the PSAT, a practice test for the SAT. They're also not happy with the system of using a simple cutoff score to determine eligibility and are concerned the process is unfair to some minority and low-income students. What UC faculty think about a...

ASSOCIATED PRESS After being drilled in a test-preparation class, Sheryl Nagy said she wasn't fazed by the new essay section of the revamped SAT exam. She just wasn't sure that the test -- 45 minutes longer this year and nearly four hours in all -- would ever end. "After a while you just stop caring and want it to be over," Sheryl, a junior at Burbank High School in California, said after the test on Saturday. "They added a lot of reading comprehension, and it was just hard to keep reading and reading and reading." Click to learn more... This...

Today marks the first day that high school students around the country fall victim to the latest manipulations of the once-reliable SAT, which now effectively limits (eliminates?) our ability to distinguish between the truly gifted and the merely average. An excerpt from my column today in The American Thinker: The SAT, which was once a test of aptitude, has transformed into an "assessment" test. The latest addition of the writing component not only adds an additional 800 possible points to the SAT score, which will now allow for a top score of 2400, but essays will be graded by human...