Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Virginia Students Achieve SAT Gains

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

SAT_scores
Table credit: Virginia Department of Education

Some good news about College Board SAT scores in Virginia to balance out the dismal news about Standard of Learning (SOL) pass rates: Public school students eked out gains in average SAT scores in 2014, continuing to outperform their counterparts nationally. Average public school reading scores improved by three points on the 200- to 800-point scale, while math scores gained a point and writing lost a point.

Virginia public school juniors and seniors ranked fourth nationally for the percentage (19.2%) earning a qualifying score (at least 3 out of 5) in one or more exams.

While Asians and whites continue to earn higher SAT scores on average, Virginia’s solid performance comes after years of steady expansion in the number of black, Hispanic and low-income students taking the exam. According to the College Board, 69% of Virginia public school graduates took the SAT in 2014.

SAT_participation
Image credit: College Board 10th Annual Report to the Nation

Also, black and Hispanic students out-performed their peers nationally. Indeed, Virginia Hispanics out-performed Hispanics nationally by a wide margin, possibly reflecting the large concentration of Hispanic students in Northern Virginia, a region of that sets higher educational expectations and has one of the best educated populations of the entire country.

Forty-five percent of Virginia’s 2014 public school SAT takers achieved the College Board’s benchmark for college readiness, according to a Virginia Department of Education press release. The benchmark score of 1550 ( reading, mathematics and writing sections combined) indicates a 65% likelihood of achieving a B-minus grade-point average or higher during the first year of college. Nationwide, 42.6% of SAT takers met the readiness standard.

Bacon’s bottom line: Virginia’s population is bifurcating along educational lines. On the one hand, an increasing percentage of high school students are achieving college-ready standards. On the other, a large and intractable percentage are failing to meet basic standards of proficiency. To a large extent, K-12 educational achievement is economic destiny. As the economy increasingly rewards cognitive skills over manual skills, that divide will become more and more pronounced. Scary prospect.

— JAB

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19 responses to “Virginia Students Achieve SAT Gains”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeCz_ivXT90

    we suck in international comparisons … though

    and I still continue to say – it’s not how many go to college – it’s how many don’t graduate with sufficient skills to become employed and need entitlements.

    how many of the 31% who do not take the SATs – graduate and are employable?

  2. Malcolm Baldwin Avatar
    Malcolm Baldwin

    Your bottom line provides the key, and indeed, most “scary” issue, which we’ve not begun to address. One simple beginning would be to promote full-day kindergarten and pre-k, which all studies show are critical to cognitive development. But here in Loudoun, the nation’s richest county, our (Republican) Supervisors say we can’t afford it. It’s simply a selfish scandal, and monumentally stupid. Yes, while not a cure all, it’s a proven tool toward addressing what’s truly “scary” if folks were willing to increase their taxes just a bit. But keeping taxes low is the prevailing mantra.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      well Bacon himself say he is opposed to paying more for education for some kids…that need more services…

      and he totally skates past the idea that some schools find the money and resources to educate the kids that are likely in that group of 31% that we can only hope will get enough education to grow up – become taxpayers, support their families – and not need entitlements.

      we keep working the other end of the equation – to see how many college-bound we can help get to college – but all those kids going to college are going to be paying entitlements for the ones that never get enough education to just get a job.. ..

      we have our priorities screwed up.. we keep playing silly games where we blame the parents, blame the kids, blame the gangsta rap, you name it – and in the end – we pay their entitlements and if they do illegal things to make a living – their incarceration and then – even more irony – we support programs to rehabilitate felons so they can get jobs.

      why not start out to get as many as we can – able to get a job when they finish high school?

      Conservative types these days seem to have a great deal of trouble in dealing with realities.. that don’t coincide with their philosophical beliefs.

      Our goal – first and foremost – and the fundamental purpose of collecting taxes from all of us whether we have kids or not – is to produce an employable workforce – first. GOing to college is a bonus and we should support it – but when we support it instead of workforce education – it’s just dumb.

      Yes.. there are some we will not reach. I never believed that we can reach every kid but is 1/3 of the kids a reasonable number to end up receiving entitlements instead of being ably employed?

      I got disillusioned with the right – when they stopped dealing with realities and insisted on ideology… whether it dealt with the realities or not.

    2. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      Many high schools in Va has more than one college prep program, the have several, as well as a diverse offering of electives and sports programs.

      we never know how much schools spend on high schools vs elementary schools on a per pupil basis – that info is never reported in school budgets as far as I can tell and I wonder if people knew and realized that high schools probably spend a lot more per student than elementary schools that it would be okay if the elementary school failed accreditation because large numbers of kids were failing the foundational SOLs.

      They will have Governors School, AP, IB, and dual enrollment and such and the school systems may well choose to expend their resources for those programs rather than Pre-K and Head Start and Title 1 early intervention programs, and in fact, the money for Pre-K, head start and Title 1 come from the Feds and state usually while the money for things like AP and school sports comes from local money.

      Most school districts do not break the budget down to disclose to taxpayers what the local discretionary money – not require by the state as a match for the SOQs is spent on.

      no accounting for the local money is provided other than to note at the top of the budget how much the local money beyond the SOQ match is – which I suspect is required by the state since it’s present in every school budget I have seen – at the same time no accounting for how it is spent.

      the same fiscal conservatives here that rail about murky state transportation funding apparently could care less on how much money is taxed locally over and above what the state requires – and what it is spent for.

      Then it gets every worse –

      These elementary schools who have significant numbers of economically disadvantaged kids who are – literally failing the core SOLs – 50-60% in some cases – don’t even post the scores for their school – and don’t even post the fact that that school has failed accreditation.

      VDOE collaborates in this de-facto non-disclosure, in that VDOE DOES provide the info at their website but they do not require the schools to do so on their own websites so the public is pretty much clueless unless they know where the SOLs scores and accreditation status are kept and made available at VDOE – the average parent does not even know what VDOE is in the first place.

      so what folks DO see is the top level SOL scores for the state – that DO show a “racial” gap.. sure enough.

      what folks DON’T know is how this happens in that more than a few schools in Va have huge “racial” gaps in the 30, 40, 50% range but in the very same school district, there are other schools that have much smaller gaps for the very same racial demographics.. but what you see at the state – and even the district school levels are not the disparities between schools – but the aggregate scores that essentially hide the disparities.

      so – we have a system where the dark-side of our disparities is essentially hidden so that people will then talk about the “stubborn” …. “racial gap” and posit that it’s culture – even as we have more than a few schools in Va where there is virtually no such “racial gap” but there are so many more that have huge gaps that when the data gets aggregated – you get a totally misleading – sound bite view of the reality.

      People should be outraged over this because while they are bragging on basically treading water on the SATs – we have almost a third of students with bare minimal educations that will not get them much more than a minimum wage job where they require entitlements for medical care, food and even shelter – and paid for by those kids who got college educations.

      even the kids that go to college have inferior educations in this country. Their competencies when ranked on an international basis – put them in the 20th level and lower and yet we “cheer” the news that our SATs when considered just for this country are up a point or so or down a point or so.

      we’re not serious about education in this country. we’re not serious about it for economically disadvantaged kids but we’re also not serious about it for the college-bound. About 1/3 of the kids – the ones that go to college reach the level of “proficient” in the competencies.

      ” Few States Set World-Class Standards”

      http://educationnext.org/few-states-set-worldclass-standards/

  3. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    I wonder why they (VDOE) just co-mingled all schools with public schools. Obviously private, Catholic, home-schooled students, which I think make up 10% of all students, would have had to score 30 points higher in order to bring the all schools scores up 3 points over the public schools. Why not show us all the data?

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      Good catch HCJ! why is VDOE even collecting non-public school data to start with?

  4. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    I do agree with Larry about one thing. We need full disclosure on how much money is spent per school. That’s Accountability 101. If there are disparities in spending per school and spending per pupil, then the public needs to know about it. Some disparities are justified (more money for disabled students), some are not (disparities based on race).

    Related to full disclosure is the idea of allocating state education dollars (and arguably local dollars, too) on a per-student basis, with adjustments for students with disabilities. The money follows the student. If a school enrolls more students, it gets more money. If a school has more disabled students, it gets more money.

    Now, if we combined those ideas with giving families more choice about attendance within the public school system, we could create some serious competitive pressure for schools to improve. Such a voucher-like system would sidestep the whole debate over using vouchers to subsidize private religious schools, vouchers enabling private schools to skim the cream of public schools, etc.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      ” Now, if we combined those ideas with giving families more choice about attendance within the public school system, we could create some serious competitive pressure for schools to improve. Such a voucher-like system would sidestep the whole debate over using vouchers to subsidize private religious schools, vouchers enabling private schools to skim the cream of public schools, etc.”

      Well – given the way the school systems have basically destroyed any semblance of transparency for their spending – ESPECIALLY their LOCAL spending … and the fact that they are institutionally dedicated to denying such transparency – by their actions…

      we’re talking about creating a competing system with the same problems…except they will have profit incentives.

      The purpose and intent of NCLB has been effectively destroyed because not only is the data submerged but people are mislead by the results – like believing a state or district level racial gap – means that it is uniform throughout the schools rather than the huge disparities between schools – even in the same school districts.

      we would give this same capability to private for-profit schools – why?

      if private schools are allowed to corrupt the data in the same way – how would the be any improvement over what we have now?

      I’m in favor of a much more competitive environment.. I’d support vouchers.. I’d even support the state providing the money and forcing the locals to provide their share – on a per pupil basis – IF we would end up with a more transparent environment where we COULD hold the individual schools accountable – public and private.

      but right now we have a corrupt system that basically lies to the public about it’s spending and it’s academic performance.

      Jim gets his rump in a roar over how Va does transportation but seems to have no such passion for the school situation… which is abysmal in some respects.

      1. James A. Bacon Avatar
        James A. Bacon

        Larry, I think you totally misinterpreted what I wrote. The thrust of my idea was to create competition *within* the public school system, not a new system that competes *with* public schools.

        1. larryg Avatar
          larryg

          well you’re probably right because you said choice which I did misinterpret , my bad – but without changes in transparency and disclosure. the rot would continue.

  5. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    Back to this argument again? Per school spending will tell you nothing except per school spending. The state funding matrix outside of the basic SOL mandates that extra monies and staffing must be provided to the students that need additional help. Thus the failing schools get and have to expend more money. By offering students the opportunity to transfer (more busing costs) to higher performing schools with less (current) funding will do nothing to improve the Division’s overall performance but will over-crowd current building capacities to the point they will have to build more classrooms to accommodate the influx of students looking to leave under performing ones. Didn’t we try this during the Great Annexation Period of our history? And didn’t we try this with cross town bussing? Without the reporting you seek, I can tell you the under-performers get more money and the poster from Fairfax had this data in another posting.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      ” Back to this argument again? Per school spending will tell you nothing except per school spending.”

      it will tell you if that school is using a higher number of new and inexperienced teachers instead of Title1 stature teachers.

      if you combined total money with aggregate teacher experience..you’d know more about the schools staffing resources and whether it was more or less or equal to other schools with similar at-risk populations and if there was a correlation between poorer school academic performance and the experience and qualifications of the staff.

      ” The state funding matrix outside of the basic SOL mandates that extra monies and staffing must be provided to the students that need additional help.”

      are there specifics to this guidance? how do you know that’s being done?

      “Thus the failing schools get and have to expend more money. ”

      where is the evidence of this?

      “By offering students the opportunity to transfer (more busing costs) to higher performing schools with less (current) funding will do nothing to improve the Division’s overall performance but will over-crowd current building capacities to the point they will have to build more classrooms to accommodate the influx of students looking to leave under performing ones. ”
      I actually agree with HCJ on this.

      “Didn’t we try this during the Great Annexation Period of our history? And didn’t we try this with cross town bussing? Without the reporting you seek, I can tell you the under-performers get more money and the poster from Fairfax had this data in another posting.”

      I’m a skeptic of bussing also. the problem we have is neighborhood schools that are reflective of the neighborhoods and if the demographics are unemployment, poverty, low parental education and one parent families then the neighborhood school is going to reflect this and unless you’re going to bus ALL of the kids to another school then what does that solve ? It just creates more problems and it will not solve the basic issue which is that kids with those demographic traits do not learn the same way that kids of better economic and parental circumstances learn – and putting at-risk kids in a school that does not have the resources to handle those different needs will most often end up with those kids put in separate “lower” classes and end up with the same academic deficits.. You can actually see this in some schools in Va where the white score sky high – in the 80’s and 90’s and the blacks score in the 40s…

  6. Hill City Jim Avatar
    Hill City Jim

    LG
    are there specifics to this guidance? how do you know that’s being done?

    “Thus the failing schools get and have to expend more money. ”

    where is the evidence of this?”

    The state funding matric is available at the VDOE Finance Department. I am sure the Local divisions have reporting requirements. The only issue that would cause lower per building expenditures could possibly be tenured teachers and aides with larger salaries and benefits. That is where your argument might hold traction. I still think if you asked your local school’s administration they would provide you with the data that would show, just like in Fairfax, that the schools that need the most help are the ones that get it.
    There will always be differences in student achievement, always a bottom quartile, always a top quartile, because all students are different…and all teachers are different. Unless you dummy down so that all students pass 100%, there will always be an “achievement gap.” I don’t care which school you ship them to.

    If you can’t find the funding matrix, I sent to to JB 10 days ago. Ask him to forward it to you.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      HCJ- if you sent it to Jim and he has not posted it … geeze

      I do not think I should have to ask anyone for any data – it should be provided as a matter of practice.

      no one should have to go directly to administrators to get data that they have to produce by law and provide to the state and Feds.

      each school and each school district should provide this information on their website – without anyone having to ask for it.

      I am convinced that some school districts are NOT providing the resources needed at neighborhood schools with economically disadvantaged demographics.

      I’m also convinced at schools where whites score 85% on SOLs and blacks 40% that something is seriously wrong… because we KNOW there are schools in the Commonwealth were blacks score equal to whites.. and these kind of disparities – beg the question.

      there is s simple concept in play – you want as many kids as possible in rural areas to get sufficient education so they can leave that rural area and go to an urban area – and successfully compete for a job.

      we are not doing that. No.. we cannot get every kid to do that.. and yes.. by the time they get to high school and are an academic failure – we are not going to rescue them… but I DO ASK – what is the baseline percentage that we know won’t make it – ??? is it 5% or 50%?

      this is dumb stuff – because other kids are going to grow up to pay the entitlements of the kids who don’t make it. Is this really our policy?

  7. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    no just rural areas – areas that used to have jobs – that no longer…

    you want the kids to leave and go find jobs.. and if they have a crippled education – that option is lost and they end up on public assistance.

    this is dumb.

    1. Hill City Jim Avatar
      Hill City Jim

      It was a big file…too big to post. If I had your email I would send it directly. Be nice and ask him to forward it to you.

      1. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        HCJ – I don’t need more files!

        but if there is something of significance and importance then it’s worth a blog post and a link to it… which can be done with many services like Google Drive..

        I think – no one thing is a smoking gun truth bullet.. it’s a context of evidence that ought to drive all of us towards some commonality on what is and what is not.

        misconceptions, myths, and the like should fall away as the evidence accumulates…and the truth starts to emerge.

        we don’t need to hold multiple copies of the same data to get there… it’s a waste of storage and bandwidth.

        I very much like the way the SOL build-a-table works.. you do the query, view it on the screen and – then if you also want it you can save it.. I find it easier to go back to the build a table rather than accumulate the data extracts which in a few weeks are just clutter on my hard drive.

  8. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    a teacher friend tells me that a large percentage of kids in many schools – larger than the kids who take the SAT – take the PSAT.

    yet if you visit VDOE and the school districts – there is virtually nothing about how many kids take it nor their scores..

    this is a test that has more students taking it than the SAT….

    so why is there no reporting of it – like there is the SAT?

  9. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Once again – we’re looking at the top level aggregate scores which hide a darker reality..

    here is WAPO reporting – honestly – that reality in Fairfax;

    “Overall, average scores in Fairfax have increased 14 points since 2008. In the years since, some high schools have seen significant improvement in scores. Most have stayed about the same or improved slightly. But four schools — Falls Church, Lee, Mount Vernon and Stuart — saw average scores drop precipitously.

    Compared to other schools in the county, the four high schools have among the highest percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-priced meals, a federal measure of poverty. The schools also have a diverse student body, including large populations of hispanic and black students compared to other high schools in the county.

    At Falls Church High School, the average composite score dropped 48 points to 1520 out of a perfect score of 2400 on the reading, math and writing sections.

    The average score decreased by 84 points to 1479 at Lee High in Springfield, and the average score dropped 49 points to 1426 at Mount Vernon High near Alexandria. Students at Stuart High near Falls Church saw the average composite score sink 72 points to 1464.”

    Some schools in the county saw performance on the SAT, which is one of the top entrance exams to U.S. colleges, rise dramatically since 2008.

    The average score at Chantilly High jumped 52 points to 1673, and scores rose 75 points at Vienna’s Madison High to 1749. At Marshall High, near Tyson’s Corner, scores improved by 60 points to 1740. In Reston, the average composite score at South Lakes High increased by 66 points to 1634.

    At the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a magnet school near Alexandria for the brightest students in Northern Virginia, the average composite score in 2014 dropped by one point compared to 2008, from 2183 to 2182.”

    http://goo.gl/lkU1Af

    so what is going on – is that the good schools are getting better but the poor schools are getting worse… and the overall average scores inch up a bit or drop a bit… but clearly there is no sustainable overall trend – up. The upticks are noise not up trends.

    and the reality is – that as long as we have these pockets of poor performing schools – we’re probably not going to see any real improvement in overall SAT scores… in part because even the “good” schools in this country (save for Massachusetts, Maryland and Florida) rank not so hot in international comparisons anyhow.

    our entire educational system has serious problems that we blithely ignore and pretend it’s not the reality.

    Not only are we essentially abandoning the kids in the poor performing schools but even the kids in the “good” schools are not getting truly competitive world-class educations and the proof of this is the influx of well-educated foreign workers on H1B Visas.

    The college-educated in this country – take care of their own kids. They make sure they go to good schools and take the courses that will set them up for college but those same folks ignore what is happening to kids who do not have college-educated parents – and the irony here is that the kids of the College-educated are going to grow up with decent jobs and then get taxed heavily to pay for entitlements and prisons..

    where is the solution to this from our friends on the right? not ideology – but real practical solutions that will work?

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