Hoping Against Hope

The College Board, stronghold of SAT scores and the educational "establishment," ordinarily would strike no one as either optimistic or loquacious. But the last few weeks have seen three major press pronouncements and distinctly upbeat mood emanating from the giant.

The board announced on Wednesday that its newly released data on the SAT scores of various ethnic groups showed that rising minority scores were largely responsible for the overall rise in scores nationwide.

3-Point Rise

That overall rise--of three points on, the 1600-point scale--had been happily released several weeks before, prompting some educators to speculate--albeit timidly--that recent efforts at curriculum reform might finally be paying off by improving the nation's decrepit school systems.

The new figures show that Black SAT-takers improved their scores more than whites over the past year. The average whites over the past year. The average Black score increased by nine points on the verbal and four on the math sections of the test, while whites average increased by only two on the verbal and none on the math.

Uproar

The second press conference a week ago, at which the board broke its longstanding policy not to release ethnic data breakdowns, disturbed some educators by publicizing that average minority scores in 1981 were considerably lower than that for whites.

It was partly to counteract that impression that the board quickly pulled together preliminary figures for 1982, showing the role minority increases had played in the upswing, and held a third press conference, according to Robert G. Cameron, the board's executive director for research and development.

Timing

Despite the apparent flurry of publicity, the release of ethnic data has actually been in the works for more than 18 months, Cameron said yesterday.

In the wake of the Bakke court derision, which led to a greater demand for quantitative data on minority students, the board's trustees began debating "whether we should keep basing access to these things on our own conception of the public interest," Cameron said.

The board had also been coming under increasing fire for secrecy, and the need to improve their image in the midst of the "truth-in-testing" furor eventually helped convince the trustees to change policy.

The board had submitted such figures to Congress in 1979 as part of testimony for a hearing on civil service testing, but had otherwise kept them secret out of worry that the figures could reflect badly on minorities and lead to "a self-fulfilling prophecy," Cameron said.

Signs of Hope

Officials responding to the unexpectedly cheering statistics have, so far, scrupulously avoided giving the impression that all is now well in American education. Rather, they stress the distance left to go.

"I haven't really seen the upswing--you have to put it in the perspective of the drop that have gone before," Dean K. Whitla, a Harvard associate admissions dean and testing expert, said yesterday.

And College Board President George H. Hanford, while calling the statistics "cause for optimism," noted that the gap between average white and minority test scores still reflects "an educational deficit which the nation must overcome."

But the data nevertheless hold forth a tantalizing hope that intense public criticism of the schools in recent years may at last be paying off.

"The pressure is on the school, and they're embarrassed," the Board's Cameron said. In addition, economic hardship is making it increasingly obvious that students need a good education to make it in the tight job market, he added.

Cameron said the overall score rise had been fore shadowed as much as a year ago by rising scores on local tests. ANy improvement from current curriculum reform efforts would take several years to show up in scores, he added.

Education trend-watchers seem destined for confusion in light of the past few months, which have seen encouraging statistical gains on the one hand and widespread worry on the other as the feral government continues to indicate its lack of support for education.

Competitive job markets notwithstanding. The New York Times recently reported that fewer high scholars placed high value on a college education, and that financial and worries were turning more and more towards more immediate earning possibilities. The transfer of responsibility to the states is leading to more cuts in the same special education programs and facilities that may or may not be spewing out slightly more able students.

And even where hard numbers are involved, those who publicize such trends are bound to notice the need for some good news to offset the bad Cameron notes, for instance, that the Board's "unplanned" third release "might have been handled a lot differently" if the board hadn't known that minority scores had climbed.

Once press queries started arriving about minority score patterns, the board "might have released it to reporters on request" it the 1982 figures had been more depressing, he said.