PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island public school students’ worsening SAT scores are “unacceptable,” the state’s new commissioner of elementary and secondary education, Deborah A. Gist, said Tuesday after statewide results were released.
The 5,489 Rhode Island public school students who graduated last spring and took the SAT earned average scores of 487 in mathematics, 486 in critical reading and 482 in writing, Gist’s office said. The maximum score for each section is 800.
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The result was a combined average score of 1455 on the SAT’s 2400-point scale, the second-lowest in New England.
For the nation as a whole, the average combined SAT score was 1509, down two points from last year, as the number of students taking the test continued to grow larger and more diverse. The top-performing group of students also continued to post gains, according to The Associated Press.
The results were only slightly better when private school students are included. That boosts the average scores for Rhode Island students to 496 in mathematics, 498 in critical reading and 494 in writing, according to The College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that owns and administers the SAT test.
The organization said 8,293 Rhode Island high school seniors who graduated last spring took the SAT at some point during their high school careers. There were direct correlations between higher scores and both higher family income and highest level of parental education, according to The College Board.
More young women (4,602) than young men (3,691) took the test, which most colleges require for admission. The males scored better in mathematics and critical reading, while the females scored higher in writing.
Although public school reading and writing scores improved by 3 points compared with 2008 and the average in math was unchanged, the state’s SAT scores have fallen by 13 points in reading and nine points in math over the past 10 years, according to the commissioner’s office.
“I find these low SAT scores unacceptable, because I know that our students are capable of achieving at the highest levels,” Gist, who succeeded Peter McWalters last spring, said in a statement. “We must set aggressive goals on performance and participation rates for all students, and then we must achieve these goals.”
The results were even worse for minority groups. Hispanic students scored about 90 points below the state average on all three tests, while black students scored about 80 points below average. Gist said the state “must immediately tackle the inequities contributing to our achievement gaps.”
The commissioner’s office also said Rhode Island had the lowest rate of students taking the SAT at 54 percent.
More than two-thirds of Rhode Island students who took the SAT – 68.6 percent – requested that their scores get sent to the University of Rhode Island, and 40.5 percent sent their scores to Rhode Island College.
After the two state schools, Northeastern University (14 percent), Providence College (12 percent), Roger Williams University (11.5 percent) and the University of Connecticut (11.3 percent) were the most popular.
In addition, the commissioner’s office said Rhode Island public school students took a total of 2,617 Advanced Placement (AP) tests, up 5.1 percent from last year. The number of test-takers varied widely by location, from a high of 226 AP tests taken at Barrington High School to no AP tests taken at 17 of the state’s 54 high schools.
“Every Rhode Island student must have access to and an opportunity to be successful in AP courses,” Gist said. “It is unacceptable for any high-school student to not have options for AP or other courses that lead to college credits. For that reason, I applaud the Providence schools, which this year will offer AP courses across the entire district.”
Additional information is available at RI.gov.
