The drop in SAT scores makes perfect sense...

.....if you give credence to the widespread anecdotal rumors that bogus "credit recovery" scams are in full force and/or that schools which grade their own students' Regents exams inflate scores.

From a comment on the post "SAT scores are down but AP's are up, in the city and state".

http://gothamschools.org/2009/08/25/sat-scores-are-down-but-aps-are-up-in-the-city-and-state/


Author: Dee Alpert

The drop in SAT scores makes perfect sense if you give credence to the widespread anecdotal rumors that bogus "credit recovery" scams are in full force and/or that schools which grade their own students' Regents exams inflate scores.

NYC DOE's press spin, i.e., that scores are lower because more black and Hispanic kids are taking the SAT tests, is nothing short of reprehensible. The increase in black and Hispanic kids' graduation rates in NYC - if they are to be believed - appears to be the result of a perverse kind of social promotion.

They get promoted all right, with meaningless diplomas in hand, right out of school entirely. But what, pray tell, is the purpose of increasing minority students' graduation rates if their underlying skills haven't been upgraded in sync?

So now the Tweed spinmeisters crow because they're giving the current generation of minority NYC high school graduates, who can mostly only get hired low-paying jobs as custodians, janitors, waiters and hairdressers because they really can't read or do math very well, high school diplomas that will make nice wallpaper on the inside of their work lockers, but do precious little else for them?

What a colossal fraud! And what a miserable thing to do to these nice black and Hispanic kids who have summoned the motivation and gumption to take the SATs in the first place.

No wonder the NYC DOE has ceased its practice of publishing individual high schools' SAT scores. Seems like a lot of them may really be Potemkin Villages.

Let's all push for more economic stimulus money for the CUNY community colleges' remedial programs.


See all comments on this post here:

http://gothamschools.org/2009/08/25/sat-scores-are-down-but-aps-are-up-in-the-city-and-state/#comments

Related:
Gotham's Elizabeth Green's article (and charts) on the SAT scores.

Other News to be posted later.
Report on the Coalition for Public Education founding convention
Report from the KIPP high school hearing at IS 195 in Harlem this past Thursday.