Sunday, November 09, 2003

By Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The head of the senior school at Sewickley Academy is happy that her students last year had the top average score on the SAT college entrance exam in the region, and the third-highest in the state, but she isn't bragging.

	How public and nonpublic schools did Use the PG's exclusive database to find the SAT scores for every public and private school district in Pennsylvania. Click here to search. See extensive statistical information about SAT scores for public and nonpublic schools in Western Pennsylvania.

"We're like everybody else, doing the best we can," said Joyce Ferris. Like many other educators, however, Ferris pointed out that much of what makes a good education can't be fully measured by the SAT.

Average SAT scores for members of the class of 2003 were released last week by the state Department of Education. In this region, they ranged from 1288 out of a possible 1600 at Sewickley Academy to 653 at Imani Christian Academy in East Hills.

The list of the top 10 in Allegheny County shows a mixture of public and nonpublic schools and homeschoolers.

*Elite private schools filled the top four: Sewickley Academy, Shady Side Academy in Fox Chapel, Winchester Thurston in Shadyside and The Ellis School in Shadyside. Ellis is a girls school; the other three are coed.

*Homeschoolers, a figure that includes students taught at home throughout the state, ranked fifth, above every other public and nonpublic school in Allegheny County.

*Two public high schools, Mt. Lebanon and Upper St. Clair, held the sixth and seventh spots, with a third public school, North Allegheny, in the 10th spot.

*Religiously affiliated schools, Hillel Academy in Squirrel Hill and Trinity Christian School in Forest Hills, also finished in the top 10.

There were no Catholic or city public schools in the top 10, but there were some in the top 15. The top-ranked city school, Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill, finished 14th, and Vincentian Academy-Duquesne University, a Catholic school in McCandless, finished 15th, with Central Catholic High School in Squirrel Hill next on the list.

"There's a huge gap" between the top and bottom schools, said Amy Schmidt, executive director of higher education research for the College Board. "It would cause me to ask questions about what's going on."

The SAT results are the only publicly released scores that compare a wide range of public and nonpublic high schools in the state.

The state tests in reading and math are required for public schools, but relatively few nonpublic schools choose to give them voluntarily.

Many public and nonpublic schools give national standardized tests, but there are so many different ones -- and school-by-school results are not always available -- that those, too, don't offer room for comparison.

Comparing the SAT scores of schools can make College Board officials cringe.

Kristin Carnahan, associate director of public affairs, said, "We strongly discourage school-by-school comparisons, district-by-district comparisons."

She said there were many variables that needed to be considered, including the percentage of students in each school who take the test, a figure that the state didn't include in its release. The average participation rate in Pennsylvania is 73 percent. Nationally, the rate is 48 percent. Sometimes average scores go down as more students take the test because of the wider participation rate.

That said, Schmidt gave these guidelines for making comparisons:

If comparing individual student scores on the verbal or math portion, there are 30 points of wiggle room either way on each test. So if a student scored a 600 on the verbal section, that's not statistically significantly different from scoring a 570 or a 630.

"There's always a little bit of error in any kind of psychological measurement," Schmidt said.

As the size of the group grows, though, the wiggle room shrinks. And on the national level, even a point or two is significant.

Overall, Schmidt said, SAT results correlate to socioeconomic status, parental education and race and ethnicity, something she said was true of most educational measures.

"It's a troubling thing, but it's not anything that's part of the SAT by itself. It really just points more to the difference in access kids have to quality education than anything," Schmidt said.

In Mt. Lebanon, the top public district in Allegheny County and tied for sixth in the state, high school Principal Zeb Jansante said more than 90 percent of the students took the SAT.

He said the results "match up with the success path our students have taken." Students "come from really great homes, a great community. They have tremendous backing as well as they're getting an outstanding education here coming through the district. It's a combined effort, really."

Nina Butler, principal, general studies of the Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, the top-scoring religious school, was thrilled with the school's showing. Students there work to learn both a general and Judaic studies curriculum.,

"These results are extraordinarily exciting because we have no entrance exams to weed out slow learners, and, in fact, we nurture individuality and recognize multiple learning styles," she said.

She said the school had no dropouts, and all graduates continued to post-secondary education.

The top-scoring Catholic school in Allegheny County, Vincentian Academy-Duquesne University, is a joint venture of the Vincentian Sisters of Charity and Duquesne University.

Sister Camille Panich, principal of Vincentian, said the "rigorous" International Baccalaureate curriculum, which can lead to up to a year's college credit, depending on which exams are passed, helped students achieve. Nearly 85 percent of last year's seniors took at least one IB exam, and about 84 percent of exams taken were passed.

"We are a college prep school. We're not going to accept someone as a student if they aren't heading for college," she said. "We are a very small school. There are a lot of different things in place to help the students in many different levels of their academic endeavors."

With the average scores of Catholic schools in Allegheny County varying by 173 points, Robert Paserba, superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said, "Clearly, there are differences among our high schools in socioeconomics."

He said students tended to go to the Catholic school within a 10-mile radius of their community because most districts provide transportation for that distance.

Among city schools, Allderdice High School was at the top of the list, and South Vo-Tech High School at the bottom. At Allderdice, about 80 percent of last year's seniors took the SAT, while most seniors at South did not.

Allderdice Principal Robert McMurray said the school had been encouraging more and more seniors to take the SAT, yet the scores have remained "pretty consistent."

For the first time, all 10th- graders in all city high schools this fall were to take the PSAT, the precursor to the SAT. Previously, the test had been taken by just some students.

McMurray said his school would use the PSAT to try identify more students for advanced course work.

Bonnie Gavlak, principal of South Vo-Tech, said the school was working hard to set higher expectations and improve performance.

She said many vocational education programs had been viewed as alternatives for some students who didn't do well in school. But, she said, doing well in math, reading and writing is important for vocational students, too.

"We know we have a lot of work to do," she said.

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