Superintendent of Lynnfield Public Schools Kristen Vogel explained why SAT scores are lower than previous years at a School Committee meeting on Dec. 13.
A committee member pushed for more information at the Nov. 29 meeting, where the scores were shared by Principal Robert Cleary and Kathryn Moody, guidance chair at Lynnfield High School.
Committee member Jamie Hayman said, “Total transparency, I’m struggling here with how much do we COVID-away the results? I mean, the results aren’t where I would expect them to be, especially given all the work that’s gone into this over the last seven to ten years.”
There were “discrepancies” with the scores presented at that meeting, Vogel said on Dec. 13.
“I wanted to do a clarification on the SAT data that there’s been a couple of questions with the College Board versus the Department of Education and Secondary Ed,” Vogel said.
The information presented at the last meeting was data from only the graduating class of 2022, she said.
“What the Department of Elementary Education and Secondary Education has on their website, and they label it as the scores for 2021-2022 school year, it is inclusive of the juniors as well who took the SAT last year,” Vogel said.
For example, the score presented by Cleary and Moody for verbal was 552, inclusive of only the 2022 graduating class, but the other data — which showed a score of 582 for verbal — includes juniors and seniors.
“It looks like the scores are trending in an upward direction,” Vogel said. “I think that would make sense. If you look at the class of 2022, they essentially had three years of disrupted learning in high school … that’s an important fact to think about.”
She also pointed out how colleges were test optional at the time.
“So kids were taking the SATs knowing it was test optional, and there is going to be a level of apathy that comes with that, there just is,” Vogel said.
