We found out this week that approximately 25% of Delaware’s High school students are college-ready, in terms of their SAT scores. Leaving aside that SAT scoring is not the most reliable measure of college-readiness, what is the correlation between the SATs and the DCAS testing regime in Delaware’s schools? It seems to me that if DCAS measures what a kid is learning (yes, I know that is a BIG IF), and the kids are taking a curriculum that makes them ready for college, how can the SAT scores be so out of line with all of this testing? It is pretty remarkable to me that DCAS is used as an accountability test, but that it apparently all of that learning it measures doesn’t translate to better SAT scores.
Delaware is one of the few states that gives all of its HS students the SAT. So that means that comparing our results to other states where the SAT is administered to the kids who want to take it (and are therefore college-bound) is a problem. On the other hand, universal SATs means that there is an opportunity to examine the relationship between the so-called accountability tests and the test often (but less so all of the time) used to help determine college readiness. Especially since the State is busily promoting its leadership in producing college-ready kids.
So what’s the story here? I know that there is alot of unreliability in many of the factors forming this question — DCAS as an accountability measure, the State’s PR probably being more functional than its DOE, SATs as a measure of college-readiness. Still, I would expect that an accountability testing regime would produce much better results in terms of the tests kids take to get into college.