The College Board today made its annual announcement of SAT averages for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. That announcement usually leads many people to start ranking the states from best to worse, with Indiana often ranking near the bottom.

In a study focusing on states producing the top 10 and bottom 10 SAT averages, Greg Marchant and Sharon Paulson, educational psychology professors, say Indiana’s SAT test takers are actually exceeding expectations based on their background.

Factors related to Indiana’s low scores include the test taker’s high school rank, family income, high school grade-point average, parent education levels and percentage of students taking the SAT, said Marchant and Paulson.

Family income and education levels are the best predictors of how students perform, the study found.

“Although test takers in states with the top SAT scores tend to come from wealthier parents, the family income level for test takers in Indiana is more evenly distributed,” Marchant said. “Indiana has 13 times as many test takers from families with incomes less than $10,000 than those in the top 10.”

“In addition, less that half of Indiana's test takers' parents have four-year degrees,” he added. “Compared to the top-scoring SAT states, Indiana has more than 26 times as many test takers with parents holding only a high school diploma and has more than 19 times as many test takers whose parents did not graduate from high school.”

Marchant believes the state's education efforts continue to be aggravated by Indiana's brain drain.

“Indiana's college graduates continue to leave the state in record numbers to pursue higher paying jobs,” he said. “These educated adults move on to raise their families in other states.”

According to the study, other top factors related to Indiana's relatively low scores are

• A higher percentage of students take the test; 60 percent of Indiana's students take the SAT compared to 8 percent from the 10 states with the highest SAT scores.
• In Indiana, not just the top percent of graduating classes are taking the SAT. Indiana programs, such as Indiana’s Core 40, attempt to advance students who traditionally do not consider higher education as an option, thus encouraging them to take the SAT even if they do not plan to attend college.

Marchant said that although last year's Indiana Education: On Shaky Groundreport, issued by the Hudson Institute, suggested that Indiana's SAT scores should be higher based on the percentage of students taking the test, the report failed to consider the cumulative attributes of the students and their families.

“Based on the characteristics of Indiana's test takers, Indiana's SAT ranking should be dead last, 51 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia,” Marchant said. “Instead, Indiana's scores last year were almost 20 points higher than should be expected based on the demographics of the test takers.

This difference between actual and predicted rank was the seventh best among the states.

“States like Indiana could react with disappointment over relatively low state rankings or make efforts to limit those taking the SAT to the best and the brightest to avoid criticism based on SAT rankings,” Marchant said. “Dr. Paulson and I believe a more productive approach is to continue encouraging high school students to reach their potential and ignore averaged state SAT scores as a basis for judging the quality of the state's education system.”

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