SAT AND ACT RESULTS FOR 860 TEXAS HIGH SCHOOLS, YEAR 2022

The data packaged with this module represents 860 Texas high schools in 479 school districts (ISDs). i.e., those of School Type “S”. Charter schools are not included. In addition, several additional categories of schools were excluded. These included Alternative Education, DAEP (disciplinary), and schools with enrollments less than 100. In addition, only schools with SAT and ACT scores for both 2017 and 2022 were included. These schools were estimated to contain approximately 87 percent of all high school regular high school students in Texas in school year 2022-2023. The SAT and ACT data were for the years 2017 and 2022, as reported in TEA’s reports for years 2018 and 2023.

Two measures of student performance are used here. One is TEA’s assessment of the percentage of test-takers who achieved a criterion level of performance on either the SAT or the ACT, that criterion established by TEA. These data will appear beneath the field heading ABV_CRIT in the tables beneath the graphs. The second measure is merely the combined Math and Language Arts score on the SAT and these values appear in the field named SAT22. The data set also contains data for year 2017, therefor the need to distinguish the year in which the tests were taken.

When this module is run by clicking on Item 2 (Display interactive graphs) the graph on the left, G1, displays the data for ABV_CRIT on the vertical axis, and the percentage of Free or Reduced-Price Lunch (FRPL) -eligible students on the horizontal axis. The graph on the right displays the predicted percentages of students meeting the criterion level of either the SAT or he ACT. This field of data in the table beneath the graphs is designated PRED_ABV.

The values for ABV_CRIT were used in a linear regression with six independent school-level variables. The field names for these explanatory variables can be seen by clicking on the button beneath the data table labelled [D1D2]. When [D1D2] is clicked, the fields displayed in the data table are changed. When first clicked the button’s color is changed to red. Clicked again the field headings will be returned to their original descriptions and the button color changed back to white. In the second mode, with the [D1D2] button’s color red, the field names used in the regression are those six fields beginning with ED% (pt low-income students) and continuing as follows: TSTD%--percent of grade 12 students tested; ASIANS—percent of test-takers of Asian descent; MOB%--percent of test-takers who changed schools during the year; DISC%--percent of test-takers marked my a disciplinary event; G/T%--percent of test-takers designated as gifted or talented.

The adjusted r-square for this regression was 0.778. Taken at face value only 22 percent of the variation was due to factors other than described by the six explanatory variables used.

Table 1: Regression coefficients for variables used in explaining variation in percentages of Texas high school students achieving state-based criteria on SAT and ACT tests, 2022

It is noted that the signs of the regression coefficients are as might be expected, and all are highly statistically significant.