Scores on the revamped SAT test continued to slide this year after posting the largest drop in decades last year.
The College Board, which owns the test, released the scores Tuesday. It’s the second year students have taken the new test, which is longer and requires writing.
Combined math and critical reading scores dropped four points to 1,017, a dip College Board officials called “within an expected range.” Scores may also have been watered down by a policy in Maine requiring that all high school students take the SAT, officials said.
Writing scores also slid three points to 494, but officials said it was too early to plot trends for that section.
The maximum possible score on each section is 800.
Texas students posted a 492 in reading and a 507 in math, both one point higher than last year. Writing scores fell five points to 482. As usual, Texas scores fell below the national average.
About 1.5 million students took the test this year, and four out of 10 were minorities, according to the College Board.
“The class of 2007 is the largest and most diverse class of SAT takers on record,” said Laurence Bunin, the College Board’s senior vice president of operations.
Mirroring overall population trends, Hispanics represented the fastest-growing group of SAT test takers. About 24 percent of test takers said English was not their first language, up from 17 percent 10 years ago.
Brandon Jones, national director of SAT and ACT prep programs for Kaplan, Inc., said the pool of test takers will broaden as local and state policymakers push for more students to take the exam.
“When you think about it, people taking the SAT were those students who had definite college plans,” Jones said. “As they move to make more of their students to take the SAT, the test-taking base changes. It is probably natural to see that have an effect on the scores.”
Historically, minorities score lower than whites on the SAT. Low-income students post lower scores, as do first generation students, who made up 35 percent of this year’s SAT class.
One out of every nine students this year took the test for free because being low income qualified them for a fee waiver.
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