Reply to Bottom Half at Sidwell - How is college placement?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=SAM2][quote=Anonymous]Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say that your confidence in the Examiner data is based on its consistency with other data? I'm trying to understand how consistency with the reported data on, for example, National Merit semi-finalists (more reliable, I would say, than SAT data since the College Board releases a list of NMSFs) provides any real confidence in the SAT data?  Yes, given the percentage of NMSFs, it's entirely possible that the average SAT is composite 2100, but isn't it also possible that it's much lower and that the students recognized as NMSFs were outliers on the high end.  [/quote]
Let me try to explain my reasoning.  When I look at the objectively verifiable Sidwell data, I see several years worth of data in several categories that place its students among the top few independent schools in DMV in terms of academic performance.  These categories include NMSF% (15+ years of data), Presidential Scholar data (10-11 years of data), and AMC Math Contest data (8 years of data).  So when I find a 1400 SAT average from a reasonably credible source (a published Washington Examiner article as opposed to an anonymous online post), and that SAT average is similar to the SAT averages from others in the top few independent schools, I see that consistency as adding to the credibility of the 1400 number.  If the Washington Examiner article had pegged Sidwell's SAT average at 1200 or 1600, I'd see the number as an outlier compared to how Sidwell students perform in other academic measures, so I'd wonder about the difference.  I hope that helps explain my reasoning.

To be clear, I'm not trying to argue about which schools are the academic tops.  All of these schools are very strong academically, and the differences in numbers I track are often marginal.  I also think that if you choose a school for your child based on some number in a spreadsheet, you're making an uninformed choice.  [/quote]

Remember that in 1995 the SAT "recentered" SAT scores (translated: grade inflation, SAT style).  I'm assuming many of the parents on this Board took the SAT before 1995.  Sidwell's 1400 average score, pre-1995, would be a 1330, which might be easier for some people to believe?  Factor in as well the extension standardized test preparation of local private school students (and of course many of the public school kids in this area).  When I took the SAT in the mid-1980s, I can only recall one classmate who took something called "Stanley Kaplan," new on the scene back then, and I don't recall people having test prep review books either.

For years I was hornswoggled* (*good SAT word) at the high SAT scores I was hearing from area kids, until I really thought about the effects of test preparation and "recentering."[/quote]

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