Ask an Expert: Jim Cox and Pat Puleo
Measuring Up: A Parent's Guide to Testing, Grades, and Assessments

My son's SAT-9 scores are in the high 60s to low 70s. If the norm is 50, then this would indicate that he does slightly better than average. However, our school's scores are in the upper 80s in every subject. Does this mean that my son is going to be considered "slow" by his teachers and classmates?

No student receiving scores in the high 60s and low 70s could possibly be considered "slow" by anyone! This is one reason why trying to compare individual scores to overall school scores really doesn't work.

Your son scored well. Here's why: A 70th percentile score indicates that he scored better than 70 percent of the students who took the test seven years ago in a sampling from all over the country. Furthermore, the 50th percentile is not "average." It is simply the middle score of the students in the sampling. That point (the 50th percentile) moves from grade level to grade level and from test to test, depending on how the norming group did. Your son scored significantly better than the students in that group.

The school score, meanwhile, is an average of all students' scores. The difference between a low 70s and an 80th percentile score—your son's scores and the school's—may be as few as one or two questions out of 65­90 questions per subtest.

Rremember that this test was designed to test groups, and is not a precise tool for measuring individual student performance. On any given day, a student's score could fluctuate on each subtest by 10­20 percentile points. What is of more value is your son's performance on day-to-day work.

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