More members of Montgomery County’s class of 2007 took the SAT than ever before, but their average score dropped by 10 points from the previous year, officials announced Tuesday.
Overall, Montgomery County students, who consistently rank among the nation’s best, averaged a total score of 1624 out of a possible 2400 points, down from 1634 the previous year, spokesman Brian Edwards said.
That score was 113 points higher than the national average, which dropped by 7 points, and 126 points higher than the state score, which dropped by 13 points, he said.
Though the number of senior test takers increased 469 to a 7,760, about 75 percent of those new participants were black and Latino students, two groups that routinely and historically take the SAT at lower rates and perform worse on the exam than their white counterparts.
Meanwhile, the number of white students who took the test this year, 4,661, dropped from the previous year, when 4,728 white students took the SAT.
Seppy Basili, asenior vice president at Kaplan, an academic and test-preparation company, said the 10-point drop is not alarming for a demographically shifting area nor should it indicate a massive downturn in the quality of the county’s education. County leaders frequently tout Montgomery’s high-achieving schools as a reason to recruit business and attract new residents.
“Any time you increase participation, you expect your scores to go down. … You can’t overread into it,” Basili said, but added that other areas undergoing similar demographic shifts as Montgomery, including Fulton County outside Atlanta, have not only maintained scores but increased them.
Edwards said Montgomery County Superintendent of Schools Jerry Weast has focused on pushing more minorities into more rigorous courses. Early success from those efforts may be evident in increases in average scores at economically disadvantaged Wheaton High School, where 25 percent of its students are black and 52 percent are Latino.
Students at that school, which averaged the lowest score in the county on the SAT with a total of 1326, improved by 12 points over last year. By comparison, the county’s highest-performing school, Whitman High, which is 75 percent white, dropped four points this year for an average score of 1880.
“Do these scores mean that there’s a continued gap? Yes, they do,” Edwards said.
