History of Test Prep: SAT Results 2016 — It’s Complicated

(Edweek) By Catherine Gewertz —

So you’d like to find out how well the class of 2016 scored on the SAT, you say? Well, have fun with that.

Normally at this time of year, we report the scores and trends for the college-admissions exam. But this is a weird year, a year so full of disclaimers, caveats, and partial cohorts that it makes it pretty tough to tell you anything at all. That’s because some students took the newly redesigned SAT (March 2016 and later), and the lion’s share of them took the old one (January 2016 and earlier). The College Board’s report is here.

So we’re gonna walk through this nice and calm-like, taking occasional deep breaths along the way. Because you’re gonna need them. You’re gonna feel frustrated. You’ve got lots of company.

SAT performance:

We’ve got median scores only for the old SAT, and they show a slight drop across the board. The College Board says that since there were only three administrations of the new SAT, releasing scores would not fully represent the characteristics and performance of a complete, typical cohort. We won’t know how students are performing on the new SAT until this time next year, although anecdotal reports already show many are getting higher scores, albeit on a different scale.

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