Only 34.6% of Michigan Public School Students Ready For College

The SAT college entrance exams results for the Class of 2019 are published and apparently they are not that great for Michigan public school students.  The averages are based on their Junior year test scores.

Each year Junior’s at our public high schools take the SAT college entrance exam and from those scores the group that administers the exams determines the percentage of those test takers who they deem are “college ready”.

Their ratings are based on students’ scores in their SAT examine in both the Reading/Writing and Math sections of their test. To determine if the students are “college ready” they must get at least a minimum of a 530 score on their math test and a minimum of a 480 score on their reading and writing section.  If they achieve those scores or higher the board that administers the exam believes they meet their criteria to be considered “college ready”.

Based on the criteria stated above only 34.6% of  students graduating this year at all Michigan public high schools were considered “college ready”.  That number is approximately what the class of 2018 graduates who were considered “college ready”.

Why do they use scores from their Junior year and not from their Senior year?  I believe that would be fairer to the Michigan Public schools and the students?

According to a MLive article:

“Michigan’s class of 2019 averaged 494.8 in math, below the subscore benchmark, and 505.3 in reading, which is above the benchmark.”

What is this “college ready” number supposed to be indicative of.  Well the people who administer the SAT exams say that students who meet the benchmarks have at least a 75% chance of earning at least a C in their college freshman math, English, social studies and/or science classes.

The problem that our education business complex has yet to seem to figure out is how to better educate our children.  Why are we consistently hearing year after year and decade after decade that our children are underperforming on these types of test?

Could it just be the tests or something more complex such as all of the actors in this drama, including the parents, teachers, administrators, the Curriculum, the Michigan Department of Education and the way in which we teach our children.