In Colorado, graduation rates are rising as SAT scores drop. What gives?
More students graduated from Colorado high schools in 2024 than ever before – 84.2% of students who had started high school four years ago. Yet when that same class of students took the SAT test the previous spring, only 58.9% met or exceeded expectations in reading and writing, and 35.2% met or exceeded expectations on math.
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SAT results show only 58.9% of Colorado students met or exceeded expectations in reading and writing, and 35.2% did so in math.
It’s the continuation of a trend that has persisted since before the pandemic. Since 2017, when Colorado began requiring 11th-grade students to take the SAT, the average English and math scores have dropped by 1.3% and 3.4%, respectively.
At the same time, graduation rates have increased by 6.6%. The discrepancy, visible across states nationwide, raises the question: Are states making it easier for students to graduate, or are today’s graduates less prepared?
What factors influence graduation rates and SAT scores?
Although Colorado recently added a requirement that students show mastery in English and math to graduate, the state gave districts a long list of ways for students to qualify. SAT results are just one option.
Students can also complete a capstone project, for example, and the state doesn’t have requirements for what those look like, leaving it to districts to set rules.
Although only about a dozen states administer the SATs to all students, other tests, such as the nation’s report card or the ACT test, show stagnant or dropping scores. Meanwhile, national graduation rates have been rising for more than a decade, with states like Florida, Georgia and Nevada showing huge increases.
Experts suggest several possible reasons for the disconnect. One theory: As colleges and universities shift away from requiring test results as part of the application process, students could be less motivated to do their best, Denver district leaders said.
Another: Scores could look like they’re decreasing because lower-performing students who may have dropped out in the past are staying in school, according to Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University.
“I would like to have a stronger and more precise answer to, ‘Is it real or not?’ It would be good to know more,” Harris told Straight Arrow News. “My own take is it’s overall a good thing. Students are spending more time in schools, taking more classes and graduating. That’s better than the alternative.”
Other educators say that as the country shifts toward recognizing the importance of alternative post-secondary paths, policymakers need better data that demonstrates how well schools prepare students for options beyond college after high school.
Research shows that people who graduate from high school are more likely to earn more money and have better health compared to students who drop out, suggesting that having more graduates in a community may be a positive outcome.
What role does career education play in preparing graduates?
Eduardo Ramirez knew when he took his SAT in 2021 as an 11th-grade student at Northridge High School in Greeley, Colorado, that he didn’t need the test to apply to college. But he still motivated himself to do well. He took the test three times — even through the pandemic and his mother’s stay in hospice — in hopes of a top-tier score.
He succeeded.
After taking the test three times, Ramirez’s composite score with the best results was a 1460, placing him in the top 4% of all students.
But high SAT scores didn’t lead to an easy transition after high school. He felt unprepared for some of the classes at his college, the Colorado School of Mines. Classes like chemistry.
“I had never taken a chemistry class before, and that’s probably due to the fact that COVID impacted my senior year. Having to jump into a Chem 1 at a college level after having zero experience was hard for me,” Ramirez told SAN. “Chemistry is something that I still struggle with, honestly, but I’ve been learning more and more, getting better.”
He took advantage of the help available at the college, including a summer program before his first semester.
Looking back, he said he is most grateful for elements of his high school education that didn’t perfectly translate to the SATs. Ramirez, who now works for an oil company, credited much of his college success to engineering and career education courses he took at a career academy in high school, as well as earning a certificate with SolidWorks, a 3D modeling software used in the industry.
The SolidWorks certificate allowed him to skip about three-quarters of his first-year design courses, which freed up time to focus on chemistry.
“Being able to have an internship before I’m even in college, being able to take engineering classes before I’m taking college engineering classes, that was huge,” Ramirez said. “I felt prepared.”
Career education isn’t new in the United States, but it has made a comeback in recent years as states stress the importance of connecting students to how their lessons might apply in the future.
Career-based academies like Ramirez participated in are growing across the country.
Camille Currie, vice president of marketing and communications for NAF, a nonprofit organization that helps set up academies, including the one Ramirez attended, told SAN that career education holds value beyond the career they studied.
Even students who choose a different career path will take away different “soft skills” that can help them be successful, she said. But those skills may not be measured in data from standardized tests.
Is student achievement dropping?
Graduation rates have increased in nearly every state for several years. At the same time, high school student achievement, as seen on test results, has decreased.
That decrease has accelerated in recent years. Average student SAT scores continue to fall, continuing a trend that took hold before the pandemic.
While only about a dozen states require students to take the SATs, like Colorado, the decrease is pretty consistent among those states. Florida shows declining SAT scores, even as it logs one of the highest jumps in graduation rates. State officials did not respond to questions about how they interpret those different data points.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as “the nation’s report card,” results also show a lack of student achievement gains during the time that graduation rates have increased. The most recent data on 12th-grade students, from the 2019 academic year, found that student achievement was lower compared to previous years in reading, while changes were not significant for most student groups in math. In 2019, 40% of 12th-grade students tested in NAEP math were below basic proficiency.
At the district level, Denver Public Schools officials said they don’t believe the rise in graduation rates and decreases in SAT scores point to problems with student preparation.
“I think it’s a much more complicated conversation than it’s ever been,” said Simone Wright, chief of academics for the Denver district.
District leaders say they monitor a variety of other measures, as well as sometimes looking at national data about students who go on to enroll in college. Additionally, the district aims for students to meet graduation requirements by showing mastery of English and math in various ways.
“College is no longer the sole postsecondary pathway of success for students,” said Pam Wong, executive director of research, analytics, assessment and data for Denver schools. “Now we need to expand our understanding of the data points that speak to whether our students are college and career-ready in alignment with what we now believe – that entering into a well-paying trade is just as valuable an outcome as going to a four-year college.”
Adams 14, a smaller suburban school district just north of Denver with a heavily Latino student population, also had a big jump in graduation rates, while test scores went down. Officials there have cautioned that students they serve often perform lower on standardized tests like the SAT, indicating what they believe is a bias in the test.
But Adams 14 leaders say their graduation rate improvements are real. They told the school board that the improvements are a result of more closely monitoring student data and other logistical changes, like offering schedules that better fit student needs.
“Focusing on any one measure can cause problems because education’s so complicated, you can’t measure a lot of things you’d like to measure,” the researcher Harris told SAN. “There’s certainly a lot of worrisome signs, like kids are not reading books anymore, and what’s happening with phones is a huge problem. We definitely want to pay attention.”
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
