Re: Concerned about grades

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

> A colleague at school told me about a study he saw
> recently. In 1967, 17% of the HS grades awarded were A
> and 35-40% were C. In 1997, the %s were exactly
> reversed. And meanwhile "non-normalized" SAT scores
> are WAY down. Can anyone say "grade inflation"? John
> Barrere

The SAT folks are capable of defending themselves, but I don't
off-hand know if they are on this list so I'll toss my $0.02 worth in
on their behalf. I won't deny that we are in the midst of a grade
inflation as well as a "GPA" inflation era, what with bonus points
for honors, AP and IBP courses and all that. But the SAT folks know
something that makes what they did justifiable: the cohort of SAT
takers in the 1990s was very different from the cohort in the 1940s
when the test was last normed. Back then, only a small fraction of HS
grads went on to college and only those headed for college even
bothered with the test, and many colleges did not require SATs even
then, so the self-selection process said that the SATs were being
taken by the upper elite of the HS student bodies of the day. But
now, the SAT is almost a grad. requirement from HS and 70-80% of HS
grads (in the states that the SAT does most of its business in--the
Eastern and Western seaboards) nows take the SAT. The test-takers are
no longer the elite of the HS student-body. Many students take the
test as freshmen, or sophomores, well before they have had the
education usually thought to be needed for a good SAT score. All of
these facts have worked to lower the average score. Whether that
accounts for all the decline in the average SAT score, I cannot say,
but it certainly accounts for a big chunk of it at least. Since the
test only makes sense if the average score of those actually taking
the test is around 50%, it makes sense to renormalize the test to
reflect the current conditions. The non-normalized scores are down
because the average student taking the test today is below the
caliber of the average test taker 50 years ago, Not because the
students today are necessarily dumber or less well prepared, but
because there are more of them and the only place left to draw them
from is the lower end of the scale, since the higher end people were
already taking the test.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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