Wednesday, August 30, 2006
SAT State of Affairs
The College Board has just released the scoring results for college bound seniors who graduated in 2006 and who took the SAT Reasoning test during their high school years at any time through April 2006. Countrywide, scores dipped a bit from the results posted in 2005. Pennsylvania’s reading score also fell a fairly sharp 8 points to 493.
Analysts of all stripes are trying to dissect the numbers to explain the sudden dip. Maybe it’s real; maybe it’s not. But that is not Pennsylvania’s most telling problem. Pennsylvania’s 2006 crop of test takers performed below the national average in math and reading as well as the new writing test.
What’s worse, Pennsylvania SAT scores were lower than North Carolina’s. In math the NC average score was 513 while the PA average was 500, a significant difference. Reading scores were 495 and 493 respectively, only marginally different. Interestingly, both African-American and white students scored better in NC than in PA. Whites in NC had a combined reading and math score of 1058. In PA the combined white score was 1021—a major gap in performance between the two states. For African-American students, the NC combined reading and math score was 857 while PA’s African-American combined score was 809, a substantially worse performance.
Thus, in reality the NC test takers of each race scored far better than the Pennsylvania test takers. The reason the overall NC SAT score gaps over PA are as low as they are comes about because 21 percent of the test takers in NC were African American while only 8 percent of Pennsylvania test takers were African American. In short, it is the heavier weighting of lower scores in NC that keeps the overall gap with PA as close as it is.
But here is the worst part. Pennsylvania spends far more on education than North Carolina. PA teachers in 2003, the year the latest graduating class entered high school, were being paid an average of $52,600. At the same time, NC teachers were receiving $43,000. a difference of $9,600 or 22.3 percent. Likewise, PA total spending per student of $8,997 far outpaced NC’s expenditure of $6,562, a remarkable 37 percent difference. This reflects both higher teacher salaries in PA as well as a 50 percent greater per pupil expenditure on administration and other non-instruction costs.
Bottom line, Pennsylvania spends more and gets less in return on education than North Carolina. And yet to hear Pennsylvania teachers and public school apologists tell it, the state’s education system is first rate. Sorry, the truth is, it isn’t even average.
Analysts of all stripes are trying to dissect the numbers to explain the sudden dip. Maybe it’s real; maybe it’s not. But that is not Pennsylvania’s most telling problem. Pennsylvania’s 2006 crop of test takers performed below the national average in math and reading as well as the new writing test.
What’s worse, Pennsylvania SAT scores were lower than North Carolina’s. In math the NC average score was 513 while the PA average was 500, a significant difference. Reading scores were 495 and 493 respectively, only marginally different. Interestingly, both African-American and white students scored better in NC than in PA. Whites in NC had a combined reading and math score of 1058. In PA the combined white score was 1021—a major gap in performance between the two states. For African-American students, the NC combined reading and math score was 857 while PA’s African-American combined score was 809, a substantially worse performance.
Thus, in reality the NC test takers of each race scored far better than the Pennsylvania test takers. The reason the overall NC SAT score gaps over PA are as low as they are comes about because 21 percent of the test takers in NC were African American while only 8 percent of Pennsylvania test takers were African American. In short, it is the heavier weighting of lower scores in NC that keeps the overall gap with PA as close as it is.
But here is the worst part. Pennsylvania spends far more on education than North Carolina. PA teachers in 2003, the year the latest graduating class entered high school, were being paid an average of $52,600. At the same time, NC teachers were receiving $43,000. a difference of $9,600 or 22.3 percent. Likewise, PA total spending per student of $8,997 far outpaced NC’s expenditure of $6,562, a remarkable 37 percent difference. This reflects both higher teacher salaries in PA as well as a 50 percent greater per pupil expenditure on administration and other non-instruction costs.
Bottom line, Pennsylvania spends more and gets less in return on education than North Carolina. And yet to hear Pennsylvania teachers and public school apologists tell it, the state’s education system is first rate. Sorry, the truth is, it isn’t even average.
