Two-thirds of New Hampshire 11th-graders were deemed college ready in writing and reading last spring, while about two-fifths of them were ready in mathematics, according to preliminary results from SAT tests.
The results, released Thursday, come from the first year in which the state paid for in-school SAT tests for all high-school juniors. About 90 percent of the state’s juniors took the test, according to New Hampshire Department of Education.
Preliminary results reveal that “approximately 67 percent” of juniors met College and Career Readiness Benchmarks for English language arts as set by the College Board, which operates the SAT. About 41 percent met the mathematics benchmarks.
Results for individuals schools will be released in October.
These results can’t be compared with test results from previous years, since this is the first time SAT has been provided free to all juniors.
The College Board says meeting the benchmark “represents a 75 percent likelihood of a student achieving at least a C grade in a first-semester, credit-bearing college course in a related subject.” The benchmarks were set “using data from a sample of more than 200 U.S. two-and four-year institutions” and with input from state educators, the Department of Education said in a press release.
New Hampshire is one of more than two dozen states which have decided offer free SAT tests for juniors since the College Board began instituting in-school tests in 2013. Traditionally, SAT tests for college application have been given after school hours or on weekends, and paid for by the students taking them.
It costs around $40 per student for a state to provide the SAT test, according to reports. The state had almost 14,000 public-school juniors last year, implying that about 12,600 juniors took the tests, at a cost to the state of roughly half a million dollars.
The school-day SAT tests come as the entire arena of standardized tests is changing. In 2013, the ACT college admissions test surpassed the SAT for the first time, in terms of the number of students taking it, and in recent years a number of high-profile colleges have dropped the requirement that incoming students take any such tests.
In New Hampshire and many other states, testing is wrapped up in the debate over the national Common Core curriculum standards. The in-school SAT test replaced the Smarter Balanced test, which is associated with Common Core.
The switch to the SAT was approved by the Executive Council last year after educators argued it would reduce the amout of time that students spend taking standardized tests, as well as encourage more students to participate, since the SAT is required on many college applications.
The 11th-grade participation in Smarter Balanced was relatively low, a problem attributed to the fact that the tests did not affect grades or college applications. The participation rate for the in-school SAT was 20 percent higher than the Smarter Balanced rate of the year prior, according to the Department of Education.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek)
