EDITORIAL
SAT tests must not become politicized
Given that this is the political season, it's likely that the latest numbers for Hawai'i out of the College Board Scholastic Achievement Test will become grist for the campaign mill.
What candidates and voters must be careful to avoid, however, is using the numbers for anything other than what they are intended to be.
On an individual level, the numbers give colleges and universities one of many ways of looking at the readiness of an individual applicant for college life. In competitive schools, particularly, they are but one of many tools used in assessing an applicant.
Useful, but hardly the final word on the quality of the individual student or the quality of the education he or she received.
On an aggregate level, the SAT scores offer a diagnostic tool that measures progress — or lack of it — over time for our school system.
That is, we can see where we are progressing and where we are falling behind from year to year and graduating class to graduating class.
On this score, the numbers offer both good news and less good news. Public school students in Hawai'i reached their all-time high in math scores, but faltered just slightly on verbal scores.
Still, we trailed the national average in both categories.
It would be easy for a candidate to complain that our education system trails the national average in performance. But it would be misleading or wrong to do so. There are so many variables involved that drawing black-and-white conclusions from these numbers is almost irresponsible.
For starters, the performance of any individual school system depends primarily on who takes the test. For instance, Hawai'i has a higher participation rate than the national average, which almost inevitably means the average score will come down slightly.
If only a handful of highly motivated, prepared, college-bound students take the test in a particular district, then the average will always be higher.
One could even argue that the slightly lower average scores and higher-than-average participation rate is a positive sign about our public schools: We provide an education that motivates high percentages of students to want to go on.
Then, too, there is the population mix in our schools. Hawai'i is high on the list of schools with significant percentages of students for whom English is not their first language. No wonder we do better on the math than on the verbal portion.
What should come out of this political season is a determination to use this and other tests as they are intended to be used: as a diagnostic test of individual student progress and as a tool to spotlight successes and failures.
This last may become particularly important as the full impact of the "No Child Left Behind" federal law comes into force. One of the requirements of this law is a "report card" that will be issued for each school, detailing success and failure in a wide variety of areas.
Among the details required in this report card is student progress, disaggregated by such things as gender, ethnicity, ability to speak English and more.
If we can look at SAT scores from these detailed perspectives, we might find signs of successful educational efforts that do not pop out in aggregate numbers.
For instance, what if a school with a disproportionate number of poor or non-English-speaking students reports scores at average or even above? This would be a signal of great educational "success," even if the overall rating was barely up to average by aggregate numbers.
The point here is that the SAT, like all tests, can be a powerful tool for educational improvement if used wisely and correctly. Used improperly, the test results are useful for little other than demagoguery.
