SAT Score Decline: Evidence of Declining Schools?

National SAT scores decline; commentators across the country lament -- our schools are failing us!

However, the pundit class is once again victim to sample size bias distorting their view as this is the natural, expected result of the increase in the numer of borderline college matriculants taking the test. 

Once more, the SAT at least wants to be an aptitude test, not a knowledge test, so using to gauge school performance is misguided.

 I have taken both the old, post-re-centering but pre-writing SAT and new, 2400 SAT and will report that it is definitely not a test designed to test what you learn in high school. Only limited high school mathematics comes up and where Algebra II occurs, it is only basic. The reading test tests reading and vocabulary in context i.e. nothing you might pick up in a competent English class. The best practice is reading dense English prose. The Writing section seems to test for having an "ear" for language, also developed best by reading. That said, it is not really used by colleges, I believe, for good reason. If I were training a student to maximize their Reading/Writing score I would probably hand them the collected works of John Updike and a dictionary and have them devout a summer to it... As for math, the most difficult questions have trickery and encourage problem solving techniques i.e. they are not certainly not testing whether the student has mastered trignometry but rather what their visual problem solving aptitude might be. And, on that, unfortunately half the students will always be below the 50th percentile.