Wake County Public School System seniors continue to score well on the SAT and continue to outpace other large districts in North Carolina as well as the national average, according to results released today by the College Board. SAT scores for 2008-09 WCPSS seniors increased by 20 points over average WCPSS scores for 2007-08 with increases of eight points in critical reading, seven points in math and five points in writing.

WCPSS participation remained high with 64 percent of graduating seniors taking the exam. That’s down from 73 percent last year. The WCPSS participation remains higher than the North Carolina participation rate of 63 percent and the U.S. participation rate of 46 percent.

WCPSS and other North Carolina school systems

WCPSS scores were significantly higher than similar large North Carolina school districts. WCPSS average scores were 93 points higher than Charlotte-Mecklenburg; 101 points higher than Forsyth; 120 points higher than Guilford and 187 points higher than Cumberland.

When looking at the combined math and critical reading scores, the WCPSS average score was 1073, compared with an average score of 1007 in Charlotte/Mecklenburg, 1002 in Forsyth; 988 in Guilford; and 949 in Cumberland.

The state of North Carolina reports that WCPSS had 5,338 test takers. The College Board, however, reports that WCPSS had only 5,288 test takers because the state figures include 50 scores from the now defunct East Wake High School which were not included in the College Board district report for WCPSS. The state of North Carolina also reports that WCPSS had an estimated participation rate of 67 percent, however, the WCPSS participation rate based on the actual number of graduating seniors was 64 percent.

Among other large NC school districts, Charlotte Mecklenburg had 4,450 test takers; Guilford had 2,670; and Forsyth had 1,883. Charlotte Mecklenburg had a participation rate of 60.6 percent; Guilford had 58.6 percent and Forsyth had 57.9 percent.

SAT

The SAT is a national exam offered through the College Board. The exam is designed to measure a student's chance of success at the college level.

This is the fourth year of the three-section SAT with math, critical reading and writing

The writing section includes an essay and multiple-choice questions on writing. The critical reading section is different from the old verbal section. The analogies section has been dropped and a new sentence completion section has been added. While the analogies section was eliminated, analogical reasoning was not; questions of this nature are imbedded in the short reading passages. In the math section, Algebra II content was added and quantitative comparisons were eliminated.

The College Board has maintained a scoring system of a total of 800 points per section. On the two sections of the old test, a perfect score would have been 1600. Students can now score up to 800 on each of three sections, or a perfect score of 2400.