Is Prince William (PWCS) "comparable" to Fairfax: Average SAT Scores by Schools 2019
I collected data for months on the SAT performance on Prince William County School (PWCS) students vs. Fairfax students. I am putting the information out in a series of posts. In this post, I will provide an overview and release the collected data of Fairfax and PWCS SAT scores by schools.
We regularly hear from the PWCS Superintendent and his staff that PWCS is “comparable” to Fairfax. I wanted to see if that promise holds true to the SAT test, the most popular admissions test in Virginia.
While the PWCS Superintendent and his staff state they are “comparable” many say they don’t like being “compared” to Fairfax. However, I know many admissions professionals in this state and learned from them that when students compete for admissions they compete not only with the country, and state, but compete regionally. Many colleges and universities in the state of Virginia want regional diversity. They cannot accept “too many” Northern Virginian applicants at the expense of other regions and try to recruit and accept the best applicants from each region.
As a result, we compete not only nationally, statewide, locally, but also as a “Northern Virginian region.” We must recognize, accept, and embrace that if we want to move forward.
We cannot opt-out of competing and comparing the performance of PWCS to Fairfax as that is who our students compete with when it comes to college.
Initial Thoughts
While I do not believe the SAT is an accurate measure of academic performance or “college readiness,” I do know many colleges/universities use the SAT in their admissions process and use SAT scores in the decision-making process.
Many colleges and universities use SAT/ACT scores as well as other standardized tests to sort students into the “accepted,” “rejected,” or “wait-list” piles each admissions cycle.
To determine how much of a factor the SAT is during the admissions process, I turned to the Common Data Set. The Common Data Set, which is the collection of data provided by colleges and universities, tells us the “relative importance” of standardized tests in general. Standardize tests would include the SAT.
I learned that the majority of Virginia colleges and universities rank the “relative importance” of standardized tests as “very important” (14 by my count), many rank tests as “important” (9 by my count), the remainder who reported ranked it as “considered” (4 by my count). The 12 remaining colleges had no data I could find on the relative importance of standardized tests.
In future posts, I will break down this data in additional detail.
The number of colleges and universities requiring SAT and ACT for admissions is dwindling, especially in the age of COVID-19, and almost all Virginia Universities and Colleges have ventured into test-optional for the year or more.
However, many parents are still driving hours to take standardized tests according to the comments of the ACT Facebook page parents/students, despite the risk, for standardized tests (not recommended).
We also see that many colleges that have long-standing test-optional policies (JMU, GMU, CNU, ODU, Mary Washington)- we still see a majority of students submitting applications with SAT/ACT scores (more data on this to come).
Even though many colleges tell students they can determine if students are “qualified” without SAT scores, that students are evaluated holistically and in an individualized context, and “optional means optional," many students, in my opinion/experience, do not have enough information on the value of test-blind and test-optional admissions and worry their application will not be complete without the test. As one of my students said, “nothing is certain in admissions, I don’t want to take the chance and get it wrong.” (shared with permission of anonymity).
Some students/parents perceive the test-optional as a risk and worry they will be less competitive without a test. The testing companies and test-prep companies reinforce the message by suggesting test-optional limits opportunities.
Therefore, for students and parents, SAT scores are still relevant until we do a better job of educating students about test-optional opportunities and combating the narrative.
SAT Scores by Schools
I collected the data for the SAT scores from the Fairfax Schools County website and the Prince William County Website (the information is no longer available via PDF). I call on Prince William County Schools to re-release the data and, like Fairfax, release data for 3 years in one location, so parents can have the same information centrally located for PWCS schools.
If are any discrepancies please contact me via email: contact@jennthetutor.com
The average SAT score is in order by school and the order is listed in column 1. Column 2 is the high school name. Column 3 is the average SAT score. I included eligibility for Title 1 and total economically disadvantaged students in columns 4 and 5.
We regularly hear that this is a factor in low performance. We know there are socioeconomic biases in the SAT and access to test prep and tutors only exacerbates those issues. Those macro issues cannot be resolved at the high school level.
However, there are some cases of schools doing well despite the socioeconomic biases. I would point high schools such as Marshall, Centreville, Fairfax, Westfield, Herndon High as evidence of this conclusion. I would also note that Falls Church High School (51% economically disadvantaged) is 14 points behind Battlefield High School (10% economically disadvantaged).
What we see in the data is some schools are able to do well despite that and we need to find out what those schools are doing and perhaps adopt some of those successful strategies.
Of note, I am not “blaming” one particular school for low performance. I am laying out the data. I will discuss in future posts the current proposed solution to improve SAT and ACT scores and my proposed solutions as well as the importance of test-optional and test-blind approaches. I will state I believe the solution needs to occur at the district level, I believe district policies have contributed to the current state of the average SAT scores.
2019 Mean SAT Scores as reported by PWCS and Fairfax County
Of Note: PWCS no longer has a working link for school SAT scores. I call on PWCS to provide a working link for parents to verify the data and request they adopt the reporting style of Fairfax, which displays 3 years of data in one central location.
