The Root Cause

Despite years of professional worrying, the efforts of the Department of Education, the passage of NCLB, and reform efforts at all levels of the public education system, American SAT scores have been falling. There's a lesson here, for those who are willing to learn: SAT Scores Fall As Gap Widens; Asians Gain

High-school students' performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam fell slightly, and the score gap generally widened between lower-performing minority groups and white and Asian-American students, raising questions about the effectiveness of national education reform efforts.

Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.

Many observers Tuesday viewed the flat results of recent years as discouraging in light of a more than 25-year effort to improve U.S. education. "This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "If there's any good news here, I can't find it."

The Social Justice/Equality for All crowd will not want to hear this, but these sorts of educational disparities are the basic reason why true equality is (1) impossible and (2) socially destructive. Even if we could all gather 'round a big circle and chant "To each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" (I might be misquoting), eventually the more capable members of society would set themselves apart from the rest through their sheer utility to the rest of us.

Unsurprisingly, the average scores were distributed along a familiar racial Bell Curve that dare not speak its name:

In the class of 2009, African-American students received an average critical reading score of 429, or 72 points below the general population. Math scores had a similar gap. Hispanic students' scores also lagged but not by as much.

Asian-American students showed the most dramatic gains. In math they scored an average of 587 -- 72 points better than the general population. Since 2008, their average math score has climbed six points.

The results come a week after the disclosure that only a quarter of 2009 high-school graduates who took the ACT, the other main college entrance exam, had the skills to succeed in college

I don't think I need to recite the familiar litany of excuses that we will hear: failing urban schools, the legacy of slavery, Prop. 13 (CA only). You want an inconvenient truth Joe Socialjustice? Those Asian kids could go to school in a tent on the sidewalk and they would still be aceing their SAT's. This is great news for the US, which still has a large population of highly capable kids who will undoubtedly be the innovators of tomorrow. But that's not what the public discussion is about. Indeed, much of today's affirmative action regime, at least in CA, is dedicated towards keeping these kids out of elite universities in favor of kids who might not be ready for college in the first place.

And who cares about SAT scores anyway? America is much more likely to reward someone who is hard-working and has good social skills, rather than someone who is the smartest guy in the room. But, schools can't/won't teach that stuff either, and from what I can tell, neither will many parents. That's a bigger problem than a sub-500 SAT score, but again people would rather complain about injustice, rather than teaching their kids the basic skills that will allow them to live free and productive lives.