SAT Gap for Latinos and Blacks Grows

More Latinos and blacks are taking college entrance exams than ever before, but their average scores are dropping further below those of their Asian American and white classmates, the College Board reported Tuesday.

The growing gap along ethnic lines in the last decade disturbs some educators, who fear that Latinos and blacks will have an even tougher time competing for the limited number of seats at the nation’s most selective colleges. About 90% of four-year colleges and universities rely on SAT scores to help pick their freshman class.

“It isn’t a bias in the test,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, responding to a charge that many critics have made. “But the test does point out the inequalities of our school system.” The College Board owns the SAT.

Caperton and others note that students are more likely to do well on the SAT if they take challenging courses in high school--particularly Advanced Placement classes. Such courses are far more common in private schools and suburban high schools with mostly white or Asian student bodies than in urban high schools whose student bodies are mostly black or Latino. White and Asian students are also more likely to take special SAT preparation courses, which can cost $800 or more.

Nationally, math scores on the SAT exam rose 3 points this year to a 30-year high among college-bound seniors. Verbal scores remained at the level where they have been for the last five years.

Many educators find those overall numbers encouraging. The fact that overall SAT scores are slowly rising or remaining stable is an achievement, they say, given the increasing percentage of college-bound students who are poor or minorities or who speak English as a second language.

Indeed, the number of test takers who are foreign-born or first-generation Americans has jumped by 47% since 1987, although they continue to make up a small share of the overall college-bound population.

“When you consider where we started as a society, when college was really the exclusive province of white, upper-middle-class males, the results are quite amazing,” said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union.

Yet the incremental progress varies widely along ethnic lines. The widening racial gulf in scores becomes readily apparent over a 10-year period.

Since 1990, the average verbal score among Mexican American students--which the College Board counts separately from other Latinos--dropped 4 points; their math scores showed no change. African American students showed some improvement, increasing average verbal scores by 6 points and math score by 7 points.

But neither of these minority groups kept pace with considerably larger gains made by whites and Asian Americans. Since 1990, white students’ verbal scores have risen by 9 points and math scores by 15. Asian Americans gained an average of 16 points on the verbal exam and 19 points in math.

As a result, African American students nationwide now score an average of 198 points lower than whites on the combined math and verbal SAT. Mexican Americans scored an average of 145 points lower than whites.

In California, the gap is even wider--219 points between blacks and whites and 186 points between Mexican Americans and whites.

Statewide for all groups, the average verbal score remained at 497 on the SAT’s 200-to-800-point scale. That is 8 points below the national average. But average math scores in the state increased slightly, to 518, 4 points above the national average.

The state’s lower performance on the verbal test is partly because “English is not the first language for 19% of our kids, compared to 9% in the rest of the nation,” said Delaine Eastin, state superintendent of public instruction. English fluency is not as crucial, she said, “when you are trying to work a math problem.”

The SAT is a closely watched measure of student achievement because of its historic role as a steppingstone--or a stumbling block--to so many prestigious colleges. A record 1.26 million of the nation’s high school seniors took the exam in the last academic year.

Besides being America’s most analyzed test, the SAT is the most pilloried--called unfair to just about every group except rich, white males. But colleges have yet to agree on an alternative way to weigh one applicant against another that would compensate for unequal grading policies at different high schools.

More Findings in Grading Trends

Analyzing the answers from more than a million student questionnaires, the College Board report noted several other trends.

* Grade inflation continues to run unchecked. Although SAT scores have edged up only slightly, the average high school grade-point average has surged in the last 10 years from 3.09 to 3.26 on a 4-point scale. Furthermore, 40% of test takers reported they have compiled A-averages, up from 28% a decade ago.

Students are taking more honors courses than ever before and have raised their academic sights: A majority--53%--plan to continue to graduate school, compared with only 47% in 1990.

* Female students, who became a majority of test takers in the early 1970s, continue to widen their lead. The split now stands at 54% female and 46% male. The imbalance is greatest among African American students, with 59% female and 41% male.

* The historic gender gap in SAT math scores is narrowing somewhat. The 41-point advantage that men had in the 1980s was reduced to 35 points this year.

Earlier this month, the broader National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores showed that the math gender gap among 7-, 13- and 17-year-old students had disappeared. That finding does not contradict the continued gender gap on the SAT because SAT scores reflect the performance of only college-bound students.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, where 60% of SAT takers were Latino or African American, scores improved but lagged far behind the national average. The average verbal score went up nine points to 439 (66 points below the national average), and the average math score jumped 10 points to 457, which is 57 points below the national average.

“These are good gains,” said Los Angeles Supt. Roy Romer. “They are not nearly as far as we want to go. We’ve got more gains to make.”

Romer, former governor of Colorado, is a longtime friend of College Board President Caperton, who is the former governor of West Virginia. They are working on several plans to enhance the scholastic performance of Los Angeles students.

Caperton, for example, is pushing hard to double the number of high school students--now 1.2 million--who take AP courses--a goal Romer has also advocated. “Right now, 57% of the schools in this country offer AP courses,” Caperton said. “And we want 100% to have AP courses in the next 10 years.”

Statewide, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit alleging that the scarcity of Advanced Placement classes in California’s inner-city schools deprives tens of thousands of African American and Latino high school students of access to the best universities. The suit, filed on behalf of four students from Inglewood High School, seeks parity in course offerings at all high schools.

Eastin is pushing for a more holistic remedy. She wants all California students to be required by state law to complete more college-prep courses. Pulling together statistics from the College Board, she noted that only 36% of California’s SAT takers completed 20 academic courses, compared with 50% who completed that many courses nationally.

“If the state required more academic courses, as they do in Connecticut,” Eastin said, “then black and Latino students would do better on the SAT.”

*

Times staff writers Doug Smith in Los Angeles and Sunny Kaplan in Washington contributed to this story.

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Racial Gap Persists on SAT

SAT scores vary widely by racial and ethnic group. In the past decade, white and Asian American students have increased their average scores more than any other ethnic group. Mexican American students, in the sharpest contrast, have dropped four points on the verbal portion of the test and shown no gain in average math scores. Included are the national averages and averages for California students.

Source: College Board