SAT scores dip for high school class of ’09

Associated Press

Through the early 1990s and early 2000s, average scores on the SAT college entrance exam moved steadily upward. Now, for the last five years, they’ve been drifting back down.

The reason? Unlike on the multiple-choice sections of the test itself, there’s no one right answer. But a big factor is the larger, more diverse group of students taking the tests, combined with a widening scoring gap between the best-performing groups and those whose numbers are growing fastest.

Results released Tuesday show the high school class of 2009 earned a combined score of 1509 on the three sections of the exam, down two points from last year. The average reading and writing scores dropped one point each, but math scores held steady.

Experts caution against reading too much into the national average SAT score, given the test- taking pool changes over time and can vary widely among states. Still, the average score is now down nine points since 2006, when the writing section was first included and the test moved to a combined 2400-point scale.