Ask the experts

Q. I've been going crazy trying to find out what seems to me to be a simple statistic: Where does Hawai'i rank on 2000 SAT (Stanford Achievement Test) scores? Not, "Oh, we've improved so-o-o-o-o-o-o much!" but, "We rank 31st out of 51 jurisdictions (or whatevah)."

– Stephen Brewer

A. "There is no national state-by-state ranking or comparison using the SAT. They were not designed for that purpose. No data is collected that allows us to do that.

"The information collected from SAT allows us to compare ourselves to a national sample, a school to another school, or a school to itself over time."

– Selvin Chin-Chance, Administrator, DOE

Send questions to Education, c/o The Honolulu Advertiser, 605 Kapiolani Blvd., Honolulu, HI 96813, or e-mail to hawaii@honoluluadvertiser.com. We'll take it to the experts for an answer.