Students in the high school class of 2015 turned in the lowest critical reading score on the SAT college entrance exam in more than 40 years, with all three sections declining from the previous year.The explanation for lower reading and math scores in items 1 and 2 is the third item above. More kids are taking the test than ever before.
The mean score on the math portion of the SAT, 511, is the lowest since 1999.
The number of high school graduates who took the SAT reached an all-time high of almost 1.7 million this year.
Bluntly, many kids who have no business considering college are taking the test. The smart kids always took it, now the not-so-smart are taking it too, and not doing well, pulling the average down.
As automation hollows out the mid-range jobs reasonably alert high school grads once took, the workforce increasingly looks bimodal, with low pay, dead-end, often part-time service jobs at one end and well-paying jobs requiring relatively high level skills at the other end.
People know this, they want to qualify for the jobs that pay well and have a shot at becoming a career. So they take the SAT or ACT and do poorly because high schools have given up enforcing standards.
