The SAT scores for 1991 came out a few days ago, and what do you know: The verbal scores of high school seniors hit an all-time low. Scores on the mathematics part of the exam declined for the first time since 1980. The response from the educational establishment was predictable: same song, umpteenth verse.
The Scholastic Aptitude Test is not intended to measure achievement as such; neither is it regarded as a test of basic intelligence. The SAT is supposed to measure a high school senior's ability to read, write and reason at the college level. This past spring 1,032,685 students took the test, an increase of 7,162 over 1990. The findings were dismal.How dismal? Fifteen years ago, young men averaged a score of 433 on the verbal part of the SAT. Young women averaged 430. In 1991 the men slumped to 426, the women to 418.
On the other half of the test, involving mathematical skills, the score for men was exactly where it was in 1976, at 497. Between 1976 and 1991 young women improved in math from 446 to 453, but 1991 was two points down from 1990. The maximum possible score on each part of the exam is 800.
Looking at these miserable results, some educators were honest enough to lay the blame squarely where it belongs - upon the teachers, principals and administrators of the public school system, and also upon the permissive parents of a generation gone morally and intellectually soft.
The predominant response, to judge from The New York Times, was to fuzz the picture by minimizing the statistics. The universe of test takers, it appears, has become "more democratic." A wider variety of students are taking the test. The larger point is that there is no trend whatever toward improvement. Teachers, parents and society as a whole are failing in the most important task before the nation. We are failing to rear a generation intellectually equipped to compete in the coming century. The picture is bleak.
Why? One study after another has come to the same conclusions on the same evidence and offered the same recommendations. Our public school students have an average school year of 180 days. In Japan and most European nations the school year is 200 days or more. Our school days are roughly 8:30 to 3:30. The high school student in Japan goes from 8 to 5, and puts in half a day on Saturdays.
At every grade level, American students have less homework than their foreign counterparts. Our schools, generally speaking, are weak in foreign languages and higher mathematics. Relatively few American students take physics and calculus.
Public education is primarily a state and local responsibility, and if the picture is to improve it must improve locally. Where to start? Look in the nearest mirror.