SAT scores combined with a student’s GPA is supposed to give colleges a pretty good idea of a student’s academic abilities. For the past couple of years, 2009 and 2010, Georgia’s SAT scores have declined by a few points, overall. This decline is a disappointment to Georgia’s parents, educators, administrators, et al. The retooling of a more rigorous curriculum was designed to prepare students for the SAT in order to improve test scores. However, students’ scores have yet to reflect the restructured curriculum. Many experts attribute this to the fact that Georgia has a higher percentage of minority students taking the exam. Since minority students generally do not perform as well as whites on the SAT’s, it follows that SAT scores will drop. Should this be a cause for alarm? Let’s look at the purpose of the SAT’s. If the purpose of the SAT exam is to determine how well a student will perform in college, i.e. a student’s academic success, then this news is justifiably disheartening. However, there is a positive back story to all of this. If any good can come out of this news, it is that more minority students are indeed attending Georgia colleges. If we are concluding that SAT scores is an indicator of a student’s collegiate success then we should also embrace the idea that since more minorities are attending Georgia colleges the future of Georgia looks promising. Georgia will have more educated human resources. Having a more educated pool of professionals to choose from will make Georgia a more competitive state.
Additionally, with education, the quality of life for minority families will improve. And the future for minority children will be the antithesis of what we know about their pass. Instead of not even considering college as an option after high-school, college will become the norm-what we come to expect of them. The SAT’s may give schools an idea of what to expect academically from a student, but having more minority students enrolled in college should give Georgians hope that this enrollment trend will continue. Not only will more minority students attend college but they will also graduate from Georgia colleges and weaken the negative correlations that a lack of higher education is associated with. As the new curricula are fine-tuned, SAT scores will eventually increase overall for Georgia. But now is too soon to reach for the panic button. Georgia is moving in the right direction by ensuring that more students have access to higher education.