Original Publication:?Despite drops, Arizona students outpace nation on SAT scores
by Max Levy/Cronkite News Service (September 16th, 2011 @ 6:56pm)
WASHINGTON – Arizona’s college-bound students continued to score higher than the national average on all sections of the SAT, according to a College Board report released Wednesday.
The state also did a better job closing the “achievement gap,” with white students in Arizona scoring about 45 points higher than non-white students, compared to a gap of nearly 60 points nationally.
Both the national and state averages dipped slightly from 2010, with the U.S. scores falling to a record low.
The national average score for reading fell to 497, while Arizona students averaged 517 on that portion of the test. The math scores were higher ? 523 in Arizona and 514 throughout the country ? while writing lagged, at 499 for the state and 489 for the nation.
Each section of the test has a possible 800 points.
State education officials were hesitant to draw any conclusions from the high scores because the test is “self-selective.”
“Only students that want to take these tests typically take them,” said Andrew LeFevre, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Education. “There has been no major push in Arizona to have more students take the SAT test or less students take the SAT test.”
States with fewer test-takers tend to have higher scores, according to the College Board.
LeFevre said the SAT is the primary college-entry test in Arizona. But only 22,845 of about 65,000 high school seniors in the state chose to take it, according to the College Board.
While he would not point to a specific reason behind the overall higher scores, LeFevre did attribute the narrowed achievement gap in part to state efforts, pointing to the nation’s most-intensive English immersion program.
“Arizona has placed a large emphasis on its structured English-immersion program,” said LeFevre. Preliminary results show that students in the program who have mastered the language “are doing very well on their academic achievements.”
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