The more than 1.66 million students who took the SAT in 2012 were the most diverse group of students in the college entrance exam’s history, but the mean scores in critical reading and writing dropped by a single point, a College Board report released Monday shows.
The report, titled “The SAT Report on College & Career Readiness: 2012,” shows that 45 percent of SAT takers in the class of 2012 were minority students, up from 44 percent in the class of 2011 and 38 percent in the class of 2008.
Along similar lines, 28 percent of the SAT takers in 2012 were English-language learners, up from 27 percent the previous year and 24 percent in 2008, the report shows.
The mean scores for the SAT class of 2012 were 496 in critical reading, 514 in mathematics and 488 in writing, the report states.
The mean math score has remained stable in recent years, but scores in critical reading dropped four points since 2008, and writing scores dropped five points during the same period.
College Board officials say the broader diversity of students taking the test is a factor in the decline in SAT scores, but that diversity in and of itself does not explain the drop. Rather, they say, the biggest predictors of success on the SAT were whether students had taken the core curriculum, rigorous courses, and the level of education of their parents.
To wit, according to the report, 60 percent of students who had a parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher met the SAT “benchmark score” of 1550, versus only 27 percent for students of parents with less than a bachelor’s degree.
