Maine, national SAT averages remain virtually unchanged

Average scores on the SAT college entrance exams taken by this year’s high school graduates improved by a single point from the year before, in keeping with a general trend toward slowly rising scores over the past decade, the College Board reported Tuesday.

The edge in average scores that men have held over women, and whites have held over most minority groups, was little changed.

An outside testing expert called the results “equal opportunity flatness” and Gaston Caperton, president of the nonprofit College Board, owner of the SAT, faulted inequality in schooling for the poorer showing among most minorities.

State education officials said the average score for Maine’s college-bound students on the verbal section of the exam increased by two points while the average score on the mathematics section was unchanged from the previous year.

Maine male students outscored females in the verbal exam on average by 509 to 503, bringing the average verbal score up from 504 to 506, according to state officials.

Maine males also outperformed females in the math exam on average by 518 to 485, officials said.

Noting that Maine’s overall math exam average score of 500 was 14 points below the national average, state Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese linked the lag to a relatively low percentage of Maine students taking advanced math courses.

Albanese also noted a higher percentage of Maine students take the test than students nationally. Maine’s participation rate of 69 percent of graduating seniors compares to only 45 percent nationally. Only eight states equal or exceed Maine’s participation rate on the SAT exams.

Nationally, some 1.3 million students averaged 506 on the SAT’s verbal portion, one point higher than last year and the highest since 1987. The average score this year on the math section was 514, the same as last year’s 30-year high.

About 45 percent of this year’s estimated 2.8 million graduates took the SAT sometime during high school. Scores on each section range from 200 to 800. A perfect 1600 was achieved by 587 of this year’s graduates.

Women, now 54 percent of test takers, have made gains toward score-equality with men over the last 10 years, but only very small ones.

This year, women averaged 502 on verbal to the men’s 509; women averaged 498 on math against the men’s 533.

In 1991, when women were 52 percent of the students who took the SAT, they scored 495 on verbal against the men’s 503. On math, women then scored 482 to the men’s 520.

About a third of test-takers belong to racial and ethnic minorities, and they generally scored lower than whites who took the test.

But students who identified their backgrounds as Asian or Pacific Islander scored an outstanding 566 on the math section and 501 on verbal this year. By contrast, whites scored 531 in math and 529 on the verbal section.

Much the same overall picture was presented earlier this month with the release of national scores on the ACT, SAT’s competitor, which was taken by 1.1 million of this year’s graduates. The ACT average this year was the same as it’s been for every class since 1997.

The vast majority of Maine students take the SAT.

Education Secretary Rod Paige, who earlier expressed disappointment with the ACT results, said the SAT scores provide “more evidence that our educational system is leaving too many children behind, especially poor and minority students.”