The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

The math score keeps rising but the verbal score keeps dropping. That’s the nutshell version of SAT results at Sisters High School for the past two years.

Scores for 2005 graduates on the nation’s most widely used college entrance exam were released late last week, so quietly they barely made the papers.

The SAT exam has a verbal and a math section, each scored on a scale ranging from 200 to 800 points. The average scores for 2005 Sisters High School graduating seniors was 521 on the verbal section and 535 on the math section. The year before, the scores were 532 verbal and 531 math. And in 2003 the scores were 536 verbal and 525 math.

In sum, between 2003 and 2005 the verbal score has declined 15 points while the math score has risen 10 points. The 2005 verbal score in Sisters was five points below the statewide average of 526, while the math score was seven points above the state average of 528.

Contacted at home Saturday after a successful season opener for his Outlaws Friday night, Bob Macauley, who is the head football coach as well as the principal of Sisters High School, said that he had not yet seen the SAT scores. But when he was told what they were he noted that, “Our lowest student-teacher ratio is in math and the highest is in language arts.”

That’s why the district has hired a new high school language arts teacher for the current year, Macauley said.

That should help reduce the overload in language arts classes, except that increased enrollment is likely to offset some of the benefit. His latest numbers show 575 enrolled at the school, not counting the alternative FLEX program. The school ended the 2004-05 school year with 530.

Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo issued a sparse, six-paragraph news release, focusing chiefly on the fact that Washington state continues to rank No. 1 while Oregon remains No. 2 in average SAT scores among states in which at least 50 percent of the graduating seniors take these tests.

“I think the difference between Washington and Oregon SAT scores over the past decade is the impact of sustained investment in high school,” Castillo said.

“Oregon needs the same focus on high school achievement, and we can learn from Washington’s success.”

The Oregonian’s news story, noting that Castillo is running for re-election next year, pointed out that “Washington spends less per student than Oregon, according to the National Education Association. Oregon spends $7,567 per student in state tax money; Washington spends $7,446.”

Oregon’s statewide average SAT scores for 2005 were virtually the same as the year before, math exactly the same at 528 and the verbal score down one point to 526.

The national averages were also flat, the math score up two points to 520 and verbal score 508, the same as the year before.