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Colorado college students for the subsequent two years will be capable to meet state commencement necessities with a decrease rating on the SAT math take a look at.
The State Board of Schooling voted in favor of the momentary change on Wednesday. Workers from the Colorado Division of Schooling and lots of board members stated the change isn’t a decreasing of requirements, however moderately a response to modifications to the SAT that appear to have been extra important than anticipated.
“I need to be certain we’re not negatively impacting Colorado college students given we had some uncommon outcomes — not simply in Colorado, however throughout the nation,” stated board President Rebecca McClellan.
In previous years, college students wanted a 500 on the maths portion to have the ability to use the maths SAT take a look at to satisfy commencement necessities. Wednesday’s vote will change the rating to 480 for college students graduating in 2024-25 and 2025-26.
The share of eleventh graders who scored 500 on the maths take a look at dropped from 45% in 2023 to 39% in 2024. With the brand new rating of 480, about 45.5% of the scholars who took the take a look at in spring 2024 will be capable to use the rating to satisfy their commencement necessities in spring 2025, making the proportion akin to previous years.
The priority was that some college students might have deliberate to make use of their scores from their SAT to satisfy commencement necessities, and should have unexpectedly gotten decrease scores than anticipated based mostly on taking the PSAT of their ninth and tenth grades. These college students, now as seniors, might have a smaller timeframe to search out another strategy to meet state commencement necessities earlier than Might.
There have been a number of modifications to the SAT take a look at final spring, together with a brand new totally digital format and query and language modifications. Joyce Zurkowski, the state division’s chief evaluation officer, informed the board there may be some investigation into whether or not the questions on this yr’s SAT had been finally extra superior.
In Colorado, all eleventh graders take the SAT, and college students who meet a sure rating can use that rating to satisfy Colorado’s commencement requirement to point out competency in math and English. Districts can supply college students a few dozen methods to satisfy that requirement, similar to taking superior programs, concurrent enrollment lessons, or business certificates. Whereas state officers don’t observe what number of college students use every technique, they consider the SAT is likely one of the extra well-liked choices.
Utilizing the uncooked SAT scores, the state of Colorado additionally calculates what number of college students met state expectations in math and English language arts. The share of Colorado college students assembly state expectations on the SAT math take a look at dropped by 4.1 proportion factors in comparison with final yr. Related drops weren’t seen within the English language arts portion of the take a look at and so the state’s modifications to the commencement reduce scores are just for the maths take a look at.
On the similar time, the state can be working with increased schooling companions to determine what scores on this reformatted SAT really correlate to postsecondary readiness to advocate the very best passing rating for the commencement requirement to make use of long-term.
State Board member Steve Durham stated he was already inclined to suppose that altering the rating was acceptable based mostly on final month’s board dialogue, however since then he received extra details about the opposite states that use the SAT for all eleventh graders, together with Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, and West Virginia. He stated he noticed that they too reported related important decreases within the variety of college students assembly math expectations.
“Information now confirms the probably cause for the distinction within the consequence is because of a change within the take a look at moderately than a change in scholar efficiency,” Durham stated. “Re-norming it for this function, at the very least for commencement, for a brief time frame, is an acceptable factor to do.”
Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado masking Ok-12 faculty districts and multilingual schooling. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.
