A switch to digital SATs has helped boost the number of test-takers closer to pre-pandemic levels, but scores for recent college-bound seniors fell for the third straight year amid ongoing learning losses.

The College Board reported this week that more than 1.97 million high school students in the class of 2024 took the SAT at least once. That’s up from 1.91 million who participated in the college entrance exam in the class of 2023 and close to the 2.19 million graduates who completed the last tests before COVID-19 shuttered K-12 campuses in 2020.

As the number of test-takers rebounds, SAT scores on a scale of 400 to 1600 have continued a post-pandemic slide. The mean score slid from 1028 for the class of 2023 to 1024 for the class of 2024, both down from 1051 for the class of 2020.

The nonprofit company credited a “significantly shorter and easier” digital testing experience, the reinstatement of college application SAT requirements and an expansion of testing days from weekends to school hours for attracting more disadvantaged students to the exam.

“Giving the SAT to all students on a school day helps students understand that college is an option and boosts college going — especially for low-income and underrepresented minority students,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, the board’s senior vice president of college readiness assessments.

The College Board switched to digital PSAT testing last fall and digital SAT testing in the spring as part of a broader push to make the test more accessible and fair for minorities.

Compared with the traditional pencil-and-paper SAT, the digital version administered in May is two hours long instead of three, has shorter reading passages with one question each and allows calculators for all portions of the math section.

The latest SAT scores do not reflect this version because last year’s seniors took the exam on paper. However, roughly 3.65 million high school sophomores and juniors took a fully digital version of the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test or the PSAT 10 during the 2023-24 school year.

The College Board said this number, down slightly from 2022-23, was “consistent with participation” numbers since the pandemic ended.

Scores for the PSAT, which students take to prepare for the SAT, also slid for a third straight year, despite going paperless. On a scale of 320 to 1520, the mean score for the PSAT/NMSQT and PSAT 10 exams declined from 939 in 2022-23 to 930 in 2023-24 after the switch to digital testing.

The report comes as Education Department figures show standardized math and reading scores for younger students have dropped to historic lows since K-12 campuses closed in March 2020.

Most public schools maintained virtual and hybrid learning arrangements for most or all of the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years.

“The drop in SAT scores for the third straight year following the pandemic provides more evidence that school closure policies harmed students in measurable ways,” said Timothy K. Minella, a senior fellow at the free-market Goldwater Institute. “Because school leaders put adults’ feelings of safety above the needs of kids, college-age students are significantly less prepared for higher education than in previous years.”

As public schools went virtual, the nation’s top-ranked universities stopped requiring SAT scores for admission in March 2020, citing a sudden drop in minority and low-income applications.

Over the past year, dozens of universities ranging from private Harvard to public Georgia Tech abruptly reversed course and pledged to reinstate SAT requirements in upcoming admission cycles. They cited research showing that testing helped them better identify, recruit and retain racially diverse students.

“Many colleges … reinstated their test score requirements this year, showing colleges continue to value the SAT as part of their admissions processes after establishing test-optional policies during the pandemic,” the College Board said Tuesday.

Sliding Standards

Despite the surge in SAT exams, just 13% of test-takers in the class of 2024 participated in the essay portion of the test, down from 57% of the class of 2020. The College Board stopped requiring the essay in 2016.

According to critics, the decline in students writing the notoriously challenging essay reflects a gradual “dumbing down” of the SAT in several revisions stretching back decades.

John Moscatiello, a New Jersey high school teacher who founded Marco Learning to help students prepare for college, noted that the exam no longer requires students to demonstrate their ability to understand any reading passage longer than a paragraph.

“Every time the College Board changes the SAT, the test scores fluctuate for a period of time, and the scores become unreliable,” said Mr. Moscatiello, a former national director of tutoring at the Princeton Review. “I understand the desire to have a standardized test to compare college applicants, but I do not understand why mediocre tests like the SAT have become the standard.”

Several education insiders reached for comment predicted that the switch to digital testing will boost College Board revenues at a time when U.S. birth rates and the pool of available college applicants are entering an extended free fall.

“It is certainly logical to believe that revenue generation is part of the discussion to go online,” said Gary Stocker, founder of College Viability, which evaluates universities’ financial stability.

Mr. Stocker, a former chief of staff at private Westminster College in Missouri, noted that the College Board reported $1.04 billion in total revenue in 2022.

Besides a $68 registration fee for the digital SAT and various fees for Advanced Placement exams, those revenues include money the College Board makes by selling students’ data to colleges and universities.

“Always keep in mind the SAT is a business and they have to move the merchandise,” said Robert Weissberg, a retired University of Illinois political scientist and expert in pedagogy. “That many schools are returning to the SAT is welcome news for them. The deeper problem is … we have spent trillions [on testing] for meager or zero positive outcomes.”

Chester E. Finn Jr., a distinguished fellow and former president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, said post-pandemic slippage in SAT and state standardized test scores suggests “a seriously bleak situation for an awful lot of kids and for the country.”

“I believe that continued slippage … signifies continued weakness and weakening in the products of US schools,” Mr. Finn said.

Others predicted that average scores will keep declining as digital SATs reach more disadvantaged minorities, who have traditionally performed worse on the exam than wealthy students.

“As a wider array of students take the SAT, the average score might naturally decrease,” said Tim Cain, a University of Georgia professor of higher education. “I am more concerned that the reliance on the test might, under the guise of merit, continue to confer benefits to students who do well because of their privileged educational backgrounds.”

According to Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, pressures to increase Black enrollment at four-year colleges have driven years of changes to the SAT without resolving perennial complaints about its fairness.

He pointed out that the College Board eliminated analogies from the SAT verbal section in 2005 after years of complaints that they were biased against racial and linguistic minorities.

“The analogies section, however, was by far the most effective measure of the kind of verbal aptitude that was important for college education,” said Mr. Wood, a former associate provost at private Boston University. “It captured the student’s ability to think metaphorically — the heart of inquiry in philosophy, literature and the social sciences.”

Gold Standard
Ultimately, most education experts defended the test and its switch to a digital format. They said a combination of essays, teacher recommendations, extracurriculars, standardized testing and grades remains the gold standard for predicting college success.

“It makes it easier on students and families that digital tests can be administered during the school day,” said Michael Warder, a California-based nonprofit consultant and former vice chancellor at private Pepperdine University. “These standardized tests, together with grade point averages, make a better means of evaluating student potential for college.”

Shaan Patel, Founder & CEO of Prep Expert, a Las Vegas-based company that offers private tutoring for the SAT, said periodic changes are essential for keeping the test up to date.

“The SAT needs to continue evolving in ways that reflect modern education trends,” Mr. Patel said. “For example, integrating more practical, real-world applications into the questions can help ensure that the test assesses relevant skills for college and beyond.”