GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Data courtesy of the city Department of Education.

As promised, here’s some more detail on who takes the SAT in the city — broken down by race and painted as a picture over time.

The number of black students taking the SAT is now at 10,438, up from 6,763 in 2002. The increase among Hispanic students is even more pronounced: From 5,400 in 2002 to 11,414 in 2009. Scores for both groups in 2009 were stuck in the low 400′s on each subject matter. That would make about an 825 out of 1600 on the old scale, which included just math and reading and no writing.

Also, curiously, the number of white students taking the SAT dropped in the city this year (though it’s still above the 2002 number) as in America. On the 1600 math-and-reading scale, white students this year scored 1,031 on average.

And everyone seems to score about the same on the new writing test as on the math and reading test.

But, like we keep (unconvincingly?) saying, we’re on blog-vacation! So please help us out by pointing out the trends you see in the comments. (And check out Caroline’s point about not putting too much stock in changes in the overall averages.) (more…)

More city public school graduates are enrolling at City University of New York Colleges, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and CUNY President Matt Goldstein boasted at a press conference last month. But whether the students are prepared for the college experience, both in and outside the classroom, is much less clear.

Only 7.5% of students take all of the high school courses that CUNY recommends, and more than 70% of the first-year students in CUNY’s junior colleges must take remedial courses to catch up on basic skills, according to John Garvey, who was until recently the dean in charge of CUNY’s College Now program, which allows high school students to take college-level courses. Garvey presented the information at an event Tuesday held by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which is developing a set of recommendations for how to boost student achievement.

One major problem is that the most advanced high school courses, called Regents courses to match the exit exams students must pass, do not approximate the style or difficulty of college classes, Garvey said. CUNY freshmen are exempted from remedial courses if they score a 75 on the math and English Regents exams. But the tests focus on material that should be learned in middle school and the first years of high school, Garvey said. “They don’t align with the real needs of college courses,” he said. (more…)