Department of Education & Cultural Affairs
For Immediate Release -- Tuesday, June 18, 2002
For more information: Nicole Kranzler, 773-5232

SAT 9 Results Available 

(Pierre) -- A new Internet site allows South Dakota students, parents and taxpayers to see how their school districts fared on the 2002 Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 9) and to compare their results to other South Dakota districts and to the statewide averages.

Overall, South Dakota students ranked about the same in 2002 as they did in 2001. South Dakota students tend to do best in science, social studies and math, but their language scores, while higher than the national average, were the lowest scores of the areas tested in South Dakota. "We need to work harder to improve our students' performance in English and language arts," Ray Christensen, Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Education and Cultural Affairs said.

Schools already have received their test score reports and will further analyze and report classroom results this fall. The SAT 9 results can be viewed either district by district or as state averages on the Department of Education and Cultural Affairs Web site, http://www.state.sd.us/deca/ta/testing_assessment/Sat9/index.htm.

The SAT 9, a statewide basic skills test, was taken by more than 44,000 South Dakota students in grades two, four, eight and 11 this spring.

The SAT 9, which is the most widely used achievement test in U.S. schools today, features multiple-choice questions, designed from classroom and real-life situations, that emphasize thinking skills. The test measures the achievement of South Dakota students in comparison to a national norm sample. The sample represents a cross-section of the nation's students in each of the grades tested. A percentile rank score of 50 represents the national average.

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