St. Mary’s County Public Schools’ students exceeded national and state averages on the newly revised Scholastic Achievement Tests with an average combined score of 1532 out of 2400.
SMCPS continues to have a large portion of its senior class take the SAT. The College Board reported that 50.2 percent of the school system’s seniors were administered the SAT assessment this year. This marks the third consecutive year SMCPS administered a record number of SAT assessments.
“We are extremely pleased with student performance on this year’s SAT and, in particular, with the number of seniors who took the college admission test,” said Dr. Michael J. Martirano, superintendent of schools. “The focused efforts of students, parents, teachers, counselors, and administrators allowed our students to perform at higher levels this year.”
Great Mills High School administered the SAT assessment to 50.8 percent of its senior class. Great Mills seniors scored a 476 average on the mathematics portion. This combined with a 476 average critical reading and a 456 average writing score gave Great Mills a 1408 composite average.
Leonardtown High School seniors posted scores above the state and national averages and administered a record number of SAT tests – increasing the number of senior test takers by 61 from the prior year. Over 64 percent of the senior class took the SAT. While administering more SAT assessments, the Leonardtown students exceeded last year’s average test scores. Leonardtown posted a critical reading average score of 524, a writing average score of 517, and a mathematics average score of 531, which gave Leonardtown a 1572 composite average.
Chopticon High School led all county schools in the mathematics and writing performance of the new SAT. Their average critical reading score of 524, average mathematics score of 547, and average writing score of 527 led to a 1598 composite average.
The SAT Reasoning Test is a measure of the critical thinking skills students need for academic success in college. The SAT assesses how well students analyze and solve problems. The tests are typically taken by high school juniors and seniors, and are designed for students who plan to attend four-year colleges. Results of these tests are used by colleges and universities to make decisions about the admission of individual students to their programs and to assess a student’s academic potential for success in college.
The SAT includes a Critical Reading, Math, and Writing section, and includes expanded math topics such as exponential growth, absolute value, and functional notation. The SAT places greater emphasis on topics such as linear functions, manipulations with exponents, and properties of tangent lines. The critical reading section, formerly known as the verbal section, includes short reading passages along with the existing long reading passages. Analogies have been eliminated, but sentence-completion questions and passage-based reading questions remain. The writing section includes both multiple-choice questions and a direct writing measure in t