SAT Scores Drop in DeKalb County Schools

With more DeKalb County Schools students taking the SAT exam, the system’s ranking declined by 8 percent this year, say school officials and media analysts.

In DeKalb County, the district paid for every student in the class of 2014 to take the exam, regardless of their college plans, wrote Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Maureen Downey. SAT participation increased by 45 percent, while the average score in the district dropped below both the state and national averages.

DeKalb County School District saw the average score decline to 1228, an 8 percent decrease from 1341 the previous year.

A Tuesday Atlanta Journal-Constitution report says that SAT scores were down in Georgia this year. In 2014, students scored 1445 on average – down from 1452 last year. In 2014, the national average score was 1497.

In contrast, Decatur High School seniors scored above the state and nation. With a composite score of 1583, City Schools of Decatur had the highest system level SAT composite score (mathematics, critical reading and writing combined) in the state.

The DeKalb County School System told the Brookhaven Post the larger number of students attempting the SAT contributed to lower test scores, and points to an initiative approved in 2012 to include all juniors in the test as a prime cause.

The school system said in a news release:

“An increase of 45 percent in the number of students taking the SAT exam in school year 2014 impacted the decline in test scores for the DeKalb County School District, recently released by the College Board.

The extraordinary increase in students taking the SAT test was a direct result of the SAT School Day Program, an initiative approved on December 10, 2012 by the previous Board of Education.

The expectations of the previous administration were to increase the number of students taking the SAT and allow more students to gain access to college, particularly first-generation, college-eligible students. It was publicly acknowledged that increasing the number of students in taking the test would probably result in the overall decline in the average test scores for DeKalb County School District students.

This was a one-year initiative and the current administration is not aware of any evaluation that determined if the strategy was successful.”