Only two local high schools surpassed the state average — 1,431 — on the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) administered in the 2010-11 school year, according to the Georgia Department of Education.
Commerce High School posted an average score of 1,345, 86 points below the state average and 51 points lower than the previous year. East Jackson Comprehensive High School had an average score of 1,416, which was actually up 14 points from the previous year.
Jefferson High School led local schools with a 1,617 score, up 92 points from last year, surpassing the national average of 1,483. Jackson County Comprehensive High School posted a 1,441 average, down from 1,525 the previous year.
Scores at Banks County High School (1,416) and Madison County High School (1,372) also fell.
The SAT has three sections — critical reading, math and writing — each worth 800 points, for a highest possible score of 2,400. It is designed to test the potential for success in college and remains a major factor considered for admission to colleges and universities.
Perhaps not coincidentally, CHS and EJCHS had the highest percentage of students taking the test, about 60 percent apiece, compared to 50 percent at JHS and 46 percent at JCCHS. Statewide, 80 percent of members of the Class of 2011 took the SAT, the fifth-highest percentage in the nation — and gave the Department of Education some cover for the scores.
“It is common for mean scores to decline when the number of students taking an exam increases because more students of varied academic backgrounds are represented in the test-taking pool,” declared a Department of Education news release. “As the number of SAT takers in Georgia has increased 18 percent among all students and 19 percent among public school students since 2007, score declines like Georgia has experienced can be expected.”
Commerce Response
“I was very disappointed,” confessed Mac McCoy, superintendent of the Commerce City Schools. “I don’t think anyone in a leadership role, any teacher, was happy.”
McCoy said the system has not yet had time to break down the results to see if there is a clue to what happened. One possibility is that too many students not in a college prep career path took the test, dragging down the scores.
“What concerns me more than anything is our students taking the college prep curriculum,” he said. “How have those scores been?”
Associate superintendent Joy Tolbert had a similar reaction. Tolbert said she and CHS officials will take a look at the test takers to see if students who planned to attend post-secondary schools where no SAT is required took the test — for which they were not prepared.
“For us to analyze the scores, we will need to know the names of every student at CHS who took the SAT and marked ‘Class of 2011’ during their high school career,” Tolbert commented. “After we have that list, we can analyze the transcripts for those students to look at the average SAT score for students who completed the ‘college prep’ curriculum in order to be prepared to take the test."
