MUNCIE, Ind. - Ranking states according to their SAT averages is “worse than meaningless,” warn two Ball State University education experts who have researched the differences between states.

The College Board is expected to make its annual announcement of the SAT averages for the 50 states and the District of Columbia on Aug. 28. That announcement usually leads many people to start ranking the states from best to worse.

“The state SAT rankings are worthless in determining the quality of the schools in a state, and the potential for basing perceptions and policies on the rankings is even worse,” said Greg Marchant, a Ball State educational psychology professor.

A study by Marchant and colleague Sharon Paulson to be published in the October issue of the BULLETIN spells out problems with using a state's SAT ranking as an indicator of the quality of its education system. The journal is a research publication for high school administrators.

Marchant and Paulson determined the rankings say more about the nature of the students taking the test in each state than about the states' educational systems. The study examined the characteristics of individuals taking the SAT and compared the 10 highest scoring states with the 10 lowest scoring states.

They found the larger the percentage of students taking the SAT in a state, the lower the average SAT.

In the 10 states with the highest SAT scores, an average of 8 percent of their high school students took the SAT, while 69 percent of students took the test in the 10 lowest scoring states.

Also, the lowest 10 states had twice as many high school juniors taking the test and 14 times as many SAT takers overall.

“The states with the highest SAT scores and lowest percentage of SAT takers tend to be testing mostly their best and brightest,” Marchant said. “There is more diversity in the ability of test takers that come from the lower scoring states. In the top scoring states, twice as many test takers come from the top 10 percent of their class. Test takers from lower scoring states represent a far greater range of both class rank and grade-point average.”

The more a state's education system works to increase college attendance for students who have traditionally not pursued higher education, the lower the state's average SAT scores are likely to be, Marchant added.

Differences in parent income and parent education of the test takers accounted for 92 percent of the difference among the states' average SAT scores.

The bottom 10 scoring states had more than 41 times as many test takers from families with incomes less than $10,000.

“This is major issue for high school students attempting to be first-generation college students,” Marchant said.

Compared to the highest scoring 10 states, the bottom 10 states had more than 31 times as many test takers with parents holding only a high school diploma and more than 60 times as many test takers with parents who did not graduate from high school.

“Policy-makers and the general public are likely to be misled about the relative quality of a state's education system,” Marchant said. “They do not understand that the rankings reflect the characteristics of the students taking the test. This confusion can lead to erroneous policy decisions and false perceptions.”

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Marchant at (765) 285-8505 or gmarchant@bsu.edu.)