2023 SAT scores

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They used to provide a breakdown of SAT scores by ethnic group for each school on the individual school profiles. Then they stopped doing that but put out a press release with the average scores at every high school. Now they aren't even doing that. They don't want you to focus on the disparities among schools. But you can submit a FOIA request if you're interested.

Or maybe they are focusing on handling the teacher shortage and need to lighten the tasks they do. SAT scores are not as important as they once were and fewer students are opting to take them. It's harder to make sense of the testing data given that. But sure clog them up with more FOIAs and create admin workload that then justifies the need for admin.

Equity is their main focus. They have been very clear and open it is their number one priority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are all soncompetitive and pathetic. They will eventually break it down by school you can handle the wait.

Oh, they already have it broken down. Just because they don't want parents to know about the gap between Langley and Mount Vernon doesn't mean staff and School Board members don't want to know.

Is there really a gap between the richest high school and the poorest high school? Wow, that is shocking. How could that possibly be? /s

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They used to provide a breakdown of SAT scores by ethnic group for each school on the individual school profiles. Then they stopped doing that but put out a press release with the average scores at every high school. Now they aren't even doing that. They don't want you to focus on the disparities among schools. But you can submit a FOIA request if you're interested.

Or maybe they are focusing on handling the teacher shortage and need to lighten the tasks they do. SAT scores are not as important as they once were and fewer students are opting to take them. It's harder to make sense of the testing data given that. But sure clog them up with more FOIAs and create admin workload that then justifies the need for admin.

They get a standardized report from the College Board every year that has the school-specific SAT averages as well as disaggregated data. It requires very little effort to prepare a table with a heading, a row for each school, and columns for the math, verbal, and total scores. Assuming someone submits a FOIA request for the information, it also requires little effort to attach either the report from the College Board or the summary that FCPS staff undoubtedly has already prepared for internal purposes to an email.

You may or may not be right as to whether SAT scores are declining in importance (it depends on the college or university, and some schools that had gone test-optional may have changed their minds), but that's not the reason why FCPS isn't publishing the school-specific averages.

Do your kids attend a school that you think is on the lower end of the Fairfax average?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They used to provide a breakdown of SAT scores by ethnic group for each school on the individual school profiles. Then they stopped doing that but put out a press release with the average scores at every high school. Now they aren't even doing that. They don't want you to focus on the disparities among schools. But you can submit a FOIA request if you're interested.

Or maybe they are focusing on handling the teacher shortage and need to lighten the tasks they do. SAT scores are not as important as they once were and fewer students are opting to take them. It's harder to make sense of the testing data given that. But sure clog them up with more FOIAs and create admin workload that then justifies the need for admin.

They get a standardized report from the College Board every year that has the school-specific SAT averages as well as disaggregated data. It requires very little effort to prepare a table with a heading, a row for each school, and columns for the math, verbal, and total scores. Assuming someone submits a FOIA request for the information, it also requires little effort to attach either the report from the College Board or the summary that FCPS staff undoubtedly has already prepared for internal purposes to an email.

You may or may not be right as to whether SAT scores are declining in importance (it depends on the college or university, and some schools that had gone test-optional may have changed their minds), but that's not the reason why FCPS isn't publishing the school-specific averages.

Do your kids attend a school that you think is on the lower end of the Fairfax average?

Or maybe just another of the many FCPS schools with SAT scores that decline every year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They used to provide a breakdown of SAT scores by ethnic group for each school on the individual school profiles. Then they stopped doing that but put out a press release with the average scores at every high school. Now they aren't even doing that. They don't want you to focus on the disparities among schools. But you can submit a FOIA request if you're interested.

Or maybe they are focusing on handling the teacher shortage and need to lighten the tasks they do. SAT scores are not as important as they once were and fewer students are opting to take them. It's harder to make sense of the testing data given that. But sure clog them up with more FOIAs and create admin workload that then justifies the need for admin.

They get a standardized report from the College Board every year that has the school-specific SAT averages as well as disaggregated data. It requires very little effort to prepare a table with a heading, a row for each school, and columns for the math, verbal, and total scores. Assuming someone submits a FOIA request for the information, it also requires little effort to attach either the report from the College Board or the summary that FCPS staff undoubtedly has already prepared for internal purposes to an email.

You may or may not be right as to whether SAT scores are declining in importance (it depends on the college or university, and some schools that had gone test-optional may have changed their minds), but that's not the reason why FCPS isn't publishing the school-specific averages.

Do your kids attend a school that you think is on the lower end of the Fairfax average?

Mine do. And I would prefer that FCPS posts it so that they're pressured to improve rather than hiding behind the façade of averages that claim to ouperform the state and country.

[Anonymous]

I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

[Anonymous]

Ask for the raw data and they must give it to you in 5days.

[e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

Far from it. I'm a policy analyst who thinks about data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

Far from it. I'm a policy analyst who thinks about data.

It's very easy to trot out the need for "more data" as an excuse to provide next to none. Anyone who is paying attention can see the trends in FCPS towards less transparency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

Far from it. I'm a policy analyst who thinks about data.

It's very easy to trot out the need for "more data" as an excuse to provide next to none. Anyone who is paying attention can see the trends in FCPS towards less transparency.

Whatever, you can think what you want (as it is obvious by your rigid standpoint and belief in its universality). I just think it is disingenuous to compare SAT scores with the massive shift in participation that has been happening in recent years. FCPS currently releases much less data on SOLs for instance because the VA DoE has insisted they need to be the source for data releases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They used to provide a breakdown of SAT scores by ethnic group for each school on the individual school profiles. Then they stopped doing that but put out a press release with the average scores at every high school. Now they aren't even doing that. They don't want you to focus on the disparities among schools. But you can submit a FOIA request if you're interested.

Or maybe they are focusing on handling the teacher shortage and need to lighten the tasks they do. SAT scores are not as important as they once were and fewer students are opting to take them. It's harder to make sense of the testing data given that. But sure clog them up with more FOIAs and create admin workload that then justifies the need for admin.

Equity is their main focus. They have been very clear and open it is their number one priority.

Oh, look. It's the person who mentions equity as the main focus, top priority, etc. b/c w/o any citations or authority to back them up. Just their snowflake sensitivities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

Far from it. I'm a policy analyst who thinks about data.

It's very easy to trot out the need for "more data" as an excuse to provide next to none. Anyone who is paying attention can see the trends in FCPS towards less transparency.

Whatever, you can think what you want (as it is obvious by your rigid standpoint and belief in its universality). I just think it is disingenuous to compare SAT scores with the massive shift in participation that has been happening in recent years. FCPS currently releases much less data on SOLs for instance because the VA DoE has insisted they need to be the source for data releases.

It's not a valid comparison. SOLs are state-wide assessments, so it makes sense that VDOE would be the primary source of information on SOL results. The SAT results are sent directly by the College Board to FCPS.

For a "policy analyst," you seem to traffic in bad analogies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the data would be useful. Years ago I noticed that black students at Mount Vernon performed better on the SAT than those at South Lakes. (I don’t have any idea as to the scores today). But it was a gap that on its face made little sense. Reston is a variant of Sweden in America, with all sorts of resources to assist those in need. Perhaps it was an anomaly for a year or two. One could guess that the culture that often surrounds Section 8 housing requires additional diligence and could have accounted for the gap. (A couple at University of Memphis explored these kind of gaps as to criminality and Section 8 but their research has been eclipsed as too sensitive). But there is no way to get at that data to substantiate this. By the way, I think a serious student can obtain a very good education at South Lakes so it is not a statement on the school in general. Transparency in score reporting, however, can be useful.

This is why the data always needs contextualization though--what percentage of black students took the test at Mt Vernon vs South Lakes for instance. What's the SES of each relative group (since that's the greatest predictor of SAT, far more than school attended)? Overall, South Lakes SES is higher, but the Black population SES there is a lot lower due to concentration in Section 8 housing. This is exactly why producing SAT results as a simple table broken down this way ends up being misleading--especially since test optional is lowering participation in ways it never used to. Kids see their PSAT score, know their GPA and decide whether it's worth it to take the SAT or go test optional.

You sound like that lame far-left activist who blamed declining SAT scores at a recent School Board meeting on more Black and Hispanic kids taking the test.

Far from it. I'm a policy analyst who thinks about data.

It's very easy to trot out the need for "more data" as an excuse to provide next to none. Anyone who is paying attention can see the trends in FCPS towards less transparency.

Whatever, you can think what you want (as it is obvious by your rigid standpoint and belief in its universality). I just think it is disingenuous to compare SAT scores with the massive shift in participation that has been happening in recent years. FCPS currently releases much less data on SOLs for instance because the VA DoE has insisted they need to be the source for data releases.

It's not a valid comparison. SOLs are state-wide assessments, so it makes sense that VDOE would be the primary source of information on SOL results. The SAT results are sent directly by the College Board to FCPS.

For a "policy analyst," you seem to traffic in bad analogies.

I wasn't making an analogy. I was responding to the claim that FCPS is less transparent than they use to be. One major source of shift in data transparency is that they used to be fantastic at releasing was SoL data--which they separated out into different levels and by sub-groups etc. They also released other assessment data such as DRA scores etc. It's only in the past 2 years that VA has decided that schools can't release their own reports on the data and that the VA DoE wants to handle it all and release it in their own formats which offer less granularity than FCPS use to provide.