Delaware SAT Scores: What This Newspaper Didn't Say

by HOWARD M. BERLIN

10/11/2001



It's no secret that I am a critic of the performance and dumbing down of the state's public schools over the last 20 years or so. So when the News Journal on August 29 ran a story about this year's SAT results ("Scores on SATs stagnet"), I took interest. In reading between the lines what caught my eye were the statistics and other facts not reported by this newspaper, unlike the multiple-page results that were given to the state's accountability tests. There are those who accuse me of always dwelling on the negative of things. My response is, "if I don't point them out, then who will when there are not enough positive things to be proud of?"

Despite allegations that the test is racially biased, against Blacks and perhaps Hispanics but not against Asians, the SAT-I (and the alternate ACT) is nevertheless a valid measure of how well or how poorly Delaware's students stack up against the rest of the nation, when controlled for the variability of high school grades many critics claim are often inflated anyway. It should be pointed out that a student can get a score of 400 without answering a single question and that college athletes at Division I schools are required by the NCAA to have a score of only 820 with a 3.0 GPA in 13 high school "core classes" to be eligible for what euphemistically is often referred to as an "athletic scholarship." Division II schools only require an 820 SAT-I score with a 2.0 GPA.

However, there have been many studies that have documented pervasive grade inflation in the nation's public school and even at the hallowed walls of most colleges since the early 1970s. The Boston Globe recently even singled out prestigious Harvard, where 51 percent of the grades last year are watered-down As and A-minuses and 91 percent graduated with some form of honors, as compared with Princeton, where only 44 percent graduated with honors. Certainly today's 3.0 GPA is not worth what it once was.

With the SAT results, there are a number of figures this newspaper didn't mention but were found to be available at the Department of Education's web site with a little searching. The average score of state public school graduating seniors was only 962, or 50 points below the national public school average of 1012. Remember, the SAT-I several years ago "recentered" the scores whereby the scores now are about 100 points higher than when I took them in the mid-60s. So, in 1970 terms, this would represent an approximate average of about 850, which is to say the least, shameful.

Delaware's drinking water must be public school selective as the average score for the state's non-religious independent schools was 1144 (28 higher than the national average) while the state's religious schools had an average score of 1099, which was 46 points above the national average. How the state's independent and religious schools fared against the nation's schools was not mentioned. However the article did point out that the average score for all Delaware seniors was 1000, but was inflated by 38 points as a result of an almost mandatory participation by the non-public school seniors. As an excuse, the article bragged or complained that Delaware ranked 11th nationally at 67 percent in test participation. What it didn't point out however was that about 19-20 percent of Delaware's students attend some form of private school, a rate which has been reported to be the highest in the country, and that the private schools generally require their students to take the SAT-I and several of the SAT-II tests.

To place in some perspective how Delaware's SAT scores fit into the grand scheme of things, consider the admission requirements of a few of Delaware's larger institutions of higher education. The state's largest institution of higher education with competitive admission standards is far and away the University of Delaware. Wilmington College and Delaware Tech do not have competitive admission as they are "open admissions" schools and do not require SAT scores for admission. Delaware State University is reportedly trying to be more "selective" in its admissions but its SAT scores have not been made public in a recent US News & World Report annual survey of nation's colleges. Although the UofD is listed as a "public" institution in the many college guides and surveys and contrary to common belief here, its catalog and web site classifies itself as a private institution. According to its own figures published in this newspaper and supplied to USN&WR, the 25 to 75 percentile SAT scores of its students is 1040 to 1260 with an average score of 1161. This means that 75 percent of the admitted students had a score of at least 1040 (up to the 1600 maximum).

With an average SAT-I score of 962, even the average Delaware public school student probably wouldn't have made the cut for admission to the state's largest college unless his last name was similar to one of those already on one of the campus buildings, or the student has some athletic prowess the college could take advantage of. It has been estimated that Delaware spends almost $8,000 annually to educate each public school child, one of the highest in the country. Apparently Delaware's citizens haven't been getting their money's worth.