Nevadans top national average on SAT

Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1999 | 11:34 a.m.

This year's Nevada high school seniors did a little better on their College Board exams than the class before them, while the national averages for the last two school years were similar.

While the scores for the verbal and math SAT tests were encouraging -- they were above the national average in 1997-98 and 1998-99 -- the percentage of high school graduates who were tested in Nevada lags seriously behind the nation, according to results released today by the College Board.

Nevada students last year averaged 512 out of a possible 800 on the verbal test (reading and vocabulary) compared with 510 the year before. The national average for both years was 505.

Nevada seniors averaged 517 on the math test compared with 513 a year ago. The national average was 512 last year and 511 this year.

While the national average of graduates taking the test was at 43 percent both years, it was just 34 percent in Nevada this year and 33 percent last year.

"When looking at these statistics, you have to remember that on the West Coast more students take the ACT test than the SAT," Clark County School District spokeswoman Mary Stanley-Larsen said.

"So those statistics do not reflect all seniors who take college entrance exams. Still, a slight increase statewide is always encouraging."

In Clark County, the largest district in the state and eighth largest in the nation, the verbal SAT test average was 506 this year, up two points from last year, and the math test was 517, up four points from 1997-98.

Each of those years, slightly more than one-quarter of the local graduates took the SAT, Stanley-Larsen said.

Nationwide scores on the college entrance exams remained below peak levels of 30 years ago. The College Board, which administers the test, said the 1999 class, which had 1.2 million graduates, lags six points in math and 35 points in reading and vocabulary behind the Class of 1969. The Associated Press

contributed to this report.