If the Richmond SOL and Stanford 9 scores are bad news, the Richmond SAT scores are a disaster.
Note added on June 11, 2011: Sometime in the past few days, RPS corrected the 2010 SAT scores by removing the Maggie Walker data. As calculated below, that correction dropped the Reading score from 473 to 413 and the math score from 481 to 406 (the combined R+M score thus dropped from 954 to 820). Not the earlier years, tho. See here, here, and here. For example, compare the reading and math "averages" for 2009 with those in the graphs below:
More to the point, this leaves open the question what Richmond now will do about these appalling scores and the remarkably small number of students taking the SAT.
Let's start with the Reading scores. Recall that the College Board renamed the SAT tests in 2005, changed them both as to content and difficulty, and added the writing section. Thus, the post-2005 "reading" scores do not directly compare to the earlier "verbal" scores. That said, here are the data for Richmond and the State average:
Richmond did not report the scores for the individual schools for 2002-06 and 2008-09, so we get those long interpolations that cross the boundary between the old "verbal" scores and the new "reading" scores.
The blue triangles with the red borders, up near the top, are the State average scores from VDOE press releases.
The yellow rectangles are the "average" scores reported by Richmond. At first glance, those numbers must be wrong. After 2004 only one Richmond high school scored above the "average" and the mainstream high schools were fifty to one hundred points below. The one outside datum, from the former S&P SchoolDataDirect site (the gray square with the white X in it for 2004) is some 50 points below Richmond's number.
The explanation comes from the 2010 data where, for the first time, we see Maggie Walker; it is some 200 points above the "average."
A little checking shows that, if one is willing to count the scores at Maggie Walker, which is NOT a Richmond public school, into the average for Richmond public schools, the "average" is correct, arithmetically at least.
| School | # Tested | SAT Reading |
| TJ | 103 | 427 |
| Huguenot | 106 | 415 |
| Franklin | 21 | 386 |
| Wythe | 54 | 383 |
| Marshall | 64 | 372 |
| Armstrong | 56 | 373 |
| Community | 41 | 490 |
| Open | 46 | 463 |
| MLW | 156 | 696 |
| Total | 647 | |
| Average | 481 |
Take out Maggie Walker and you get the truthful average:
| School | # Tested | SAT Reading |
| TJ | 103 | 427 |
| Huguenot | 106 | 415 |
| Franklin | 21 | 386 |
| Wythe | 54 | 383 |
| Marshall | 64 | 372 |
| Armstrong | 56 | 373 |
| Community | 41 | 490 |
| Open | 46 | 463 |
| Total | 491 | |
| Average | 413 |
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If you are surprised to see Richmond lying about the SAT scores and VDOE letting them get away with it, take a deep breath and see how they also are stealing SOL scores from Maggie Walker (and lying to the federal government about the SOL scores), cheating on the tests for kids with disabilities, ignoring the truancy laws, and encouraging cheating by the teachers). |
| Note added on 6/12/11: Here is
the graph above with the corrected 2010 reading score for
Richmond. Of course, the large drop from 2009 to 2010 is a
chimera: the earlier "averages" (still up on
the RPS Web site) are uncorrected, i.e., fraudulent.
|
The mendacity aside, the very low participation rates reveal that the scores are even more dismal than the numbers first suggest:
| School | # Tested | ADM | % Tested |
| TJ | 103 | 868 | 12% |
| Huguenot | 106 | 1260 | 8% |
| Franklin | 21 | 296 | 7% |
| Wythe | 54 | 984 | 5% |
| Marshall | 64 | 976 | 7% |
| Armstrong | 56 | 1056 | 5% |
| Community | 41 | 243 | 17% |
| Open | 46 | 191 | 24% |
| Total | 491 | 5874 | 8.4% |
| State | 59031 | 385382 | 15.3% |
Even using Richmond's bogus numbers, the scores are not improving:
To complete the picture, here are the math scores:
| Note added on 6/12/11:
And here is the same figure with the corrected division average
2010 math score for Richmond (and the still bogus earlier
Richmond "average" scores).
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To provide some context, the Longwood admission minimum score (reading + math) is 980 for a student with a high school GPA of 2.5 to 2.69 (A=4; we're talking about a C+ student here); the number is 950 for a GPA of 3 (B student). The Richmond critical reading + math for 2010 (with Maggie Walker excluded: 413 reading + 407 math) of 820 was 160 points below the C+ minimum, 130 points below the C student minimum.
"Disaster" is too kind a word for this situation. "Expensive disaster" comes closer. Yet the Richmond Times-Dispatch doesn't think the lousy scores and Richmond's whoppers are a big deal. Actually, "doesn't think" covers the RT-D.
The Richmond Schools' web page formerly said at the top:
"Capital punishment" would have been closer to the truth. Recently they changed that to read: "Illuminating the path from competence to excellence." If you believe that whopper, I have some valuable stock in the Varina bridge that I'd like to sell you.