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To: Keith Hankin who wrote (18567)	4/18/1998 12:30:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>>Meanwhile, the difficulty of the SAT test has declined 250-350 score points<<< "I think that has more to do with the fact that the SAT is a more widely taken test than in the past." I don't think so. I had a chance to talk to the chief statistician from the college boards at length about this once when we were laid over for 12 hours at the Tokyo airport. People just can't do the same level of difficulty anymore, on average. They have actually taken three adjustments of the test that I know of. In the first one, (about 1980?), they simply lowered the bar a hundred points (raised the average score 100 points) , but kept the same questions. The second time around, they had to make the multiple choice questions easier on average. The third time around, a few years ago, they added essay questions, which you could argue just took away from those good at facts and technical material and gave to the fluent native English speakers. So it is probably a broader, better test, because it tests active language use skills now, but that change also allows for some gradual fudging upward of average scores by the examiners. (Because the essays are bound to be evaluated on some kind of curve.) This can't be generalised to those best adapted to bookish education (top 1 or 2 %), because they are often substantially self-taught anyway. But the great mass of the competent A and B students have been robbed. Even the number of hours a day spent studying academic subjects in secondary schools declined substantially over time. "Also, a larger percentage of the population goes on for higher education." Figures, please. My impression is that the dropout rate a few years ago approached 50%. Meanwhile a lot of what passes for higher education now is really community college and night school students making up for what they should have gotten in high school - basic academic and job skills. Typing, welding, cooking, math, writing, and so on. These students usually do not take the SAT, anyway. "As to your assertion that advanced sciences such as nuclear physics being taught in high schools, I suspect that this was not very widely available, as I have not heard of anyone from earlier generations getting this sort of education." I think I said, or meant to say, Physics and Nuclear Chemistry, a different thing. No matter. By way of illustration, the medium size city I was in had about 20 high schools. 2 of them were science high schools with this kind of curriculum, another few were intense liberal arts schools. When you had finished with the normal introductory chemistry and biology, if you were any good at science at all you would take additional courses in electronics, physics, and so on, many of which were advanced college placement courses, some of which would be taught at local colleges. I know that in my class of 500 or so, there were at least 200 who had passed through these advanced placement or honors science classes by the age of 17. In point of fact, nearly all of the colleges that exist today were build by 1965. Since the end of the baby boom, and the reduced roll of the GI bill in sending ordinary Americans to college, the enrollment of sub-30 folks at colleges has not been sufficient to keep them all open. What keeps them floating is all the seniors going back to school, and the boomers paying big bucks for extension classes. Additionally, college closings are more common than new schools by far. Aside from that, I continue to take classes at colleges as I have for several decades now. It is MHO that these classes are not as difficult as they were in the past. The colleges have been stating plainly for 20 years now that they were 'dumbing-down' all their material because even the better students were arriving unprepared. Professors complained loudly about this 15 years ago. Less so now, as they are replaced by new faces, of course. Cheers, Chaz