Indiana’s SAT Scores Continue to Drop, Latest Test Results Show – Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather | Indiana Traffic

(INDIANA CAPITAL CHRONICLE) — Only a quarter of Hoosier high school students who took the SAT this past school year earned college-ready scores in both reading and math, according to recently released results.

More than 80,000 high school students, mostly juniors, took the test in 2023-24. Of those, about 24% of students met the readiness benchmark in both subjects, according to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). That’s a 4.4% drop from last year, continuing a two-year downward trend.

The new test results were released and discussed by the State Board of Education (SBOE) on Wednesday.

State law requires IDOE to administer a national college entrance exam to high school students before they graduate.

Scores are dropping

The SAT consists of math, reading, and writing. The assessment, administered by the College Board, gives students a score of “At College-Ready,” “Approaching College-Ready,” or “Below College-Ready,” depending on their performance.

A student who receives a grade of “Approaching” and has one year of high school remaining is expected to graduate with a grade of “College Ready.”

According to IDOE officials, students who earn a score at or above the standard have a 75 percent chance of earning at least a C in their first semester of credit-bearing courses in that subject area.

Nearly 52% of high school students met the reading and writing requirements of the test, about the same as last year.

Only 25.2% of Indiana students demonstrated college readiness in math — down 5.5% from 2022-23 and down 7.7% from 2021-22, according to IDOE. In the most recent school year, 22.1% of students were approaching college readiness and 52.7% were below the readiness benchmark.

A new SAT

IDOE officials stressed that the College Board is seeing a decline in scores nationwide, including in Indiana.

“When we first saw our data and heard from schools, there was some concern because of the SAT scores,” said Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner. “But there were some shifts in the assessment that caused the average score to go down nationally, and in Indiana.”

In 2023-2024, College Board changed the test design, often impacting assessment scores.

The SAT’s switch to adaptive grading means that questions asked of individual students will become more or less difficult depending on how they perform from one stage of the exam to the next. The new SAT is now shorter, has fewer items and shorter reading passages, takes less time to complete and allows the use of calculators, the College Board said.

Hoosier students who are chronically absent — meaning they missed at least 18 days or 10% of the school year — scored significantly lower on the SAT. Only 17.5% of those who were chronically absent showed college-readiness on the 2023-24 SAT, compared to 41.1% who met the benchmark and were not chronically absent.

Indiana’s most recent data shows that about 40% of students in the state missed 10 or more days of school in the 2022-2023 school year, and nearly one in five were chronically absent.

Jenner said Wednesday that the results underscore the urgency of the state’s ongoing work to rethink and reimagine the high school experience in the state.

“We have work to do. We know that as educators, we have to continue to roll up our sleeves and work hard, and we also have to work with our parents and families,” Jenner said. “It has to be a partnership. We know that we can best maximize learning as educators, plus the parents and families, working together for the child.”

According to State Assemblyman B.J. Watts, the data on college-ready SAT exams is likely skewed because it doesn’t account for students who don’t plan to pursue higher education after high school but are still required to take the exam.

“I think it’s important to remember … now every student is taking this test. There are probably students who don’t want to go to college — don’t want to go to college — who may not take this test as seriously as others,” Watts said. “I don’t want us to lose sight of that — we’re forcing students to take a test that they have no interest in taking … those numbers may be a little bit skewed by those students who really don’t think this test is worth anything to them.”

Changes in secondary school requirements

While many colleges have chosen to make standardized testing optional, most still use PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores when making admissions decisions.

Many scholarships and organizations also use the exams to give students money for tuition.

Indiana officials are currently conducting a major overhaul of high school graduation requirements, including proposed changes to the diplomas.

State officials say the new plan aims to maximize “flexibility” for students to personalize learning paths and experiences, including college courses they take while still in high school, and allowing them to count internships, apprenticeships, military experience and other work-related learning toward their graduation requirements.

As outlined in the proposal, grades earned from achieving college-readiness scores on the SAT or ACT could count toward the requirements of the future “Indiana GPS Diploma” — a more flexible, personalized version of the current Core 40 diploma.

Nothing is set in stone yet, however – the regulatory process to finalize the diploma model is expected to take several more months. Before the State Council holds a final vote – expected in September – there are more rounds of public comments and amendments underway to improve the overall plan.

By law, board members must approve by December, when the requirements would go into effect with the Class of 2029.