Last year I put together a few observations and thoughts about Latin and the SAT. After I noticed the 2011 Total Group Report was out some months ago, I got to looking at it and noticed that things seemed to be about the same as the year before. This time I thought I'd see what was going on with the Subject Test data, and that led me to looking at the correlation between years of study and various subject areas. Eventually that got me into wondering where the three (four if you count a distance learning course offering) languages at my school fit with the national data. You can download copies and check the data at the CollegeBoard Data & Reports page. For earlier years look under Archived SAT Data & Reports.
Caveats: The SAT report says that the data in it is for high school graduates in the year 2011. It claims a total number of test-takers of 1,647,123. What percentage of all high school graduates this represents I don't know. The 2011 ACT report claims "About 49% of all 2011 high school graduates in the United States took the ACT during high school, or about 1.62 million graduates." Were there then about 3.3 million high school graduate? There must be some percentage of graduates who took neither test, those heading for the military, into technical/vocational training programs, or directly into the workforce. Presumably there are some stats on this, but I don't know where they are. The ACT report does not mention foreign languages.
Subject tests have been going on for what seems like forever. I think I took them in English and French back in 1966 or 1967. At least I picked up 6 credits at Penn State for them. In 2011 there were some 312,000 subject test takers. This is up from about 279,000 in 2006. Of these about 3,000 have taken the subject test in Latin. That one percent of the subject test taking population does better on the three aspects of the general SAT than any other group, and of course rather considerably better than the norm for all students (which has been totaling about 1500 the last five years - see below). Note that I have just added up the three scores for Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing.
year
|
total of the mean scores of Latin students (about 1% of the total number of test takers)
|
mean of the total mean scores for other students
|
next highest set of mean scores to Latin
|
subject of the test with the next highest mean scores
|
lowest set of mean scores
|
subject of the test with the lowest mean scores
|
2006
|
2011
|
1833.8
|
1922
|
German
|
1698
|
Spanish listening
|
2007
|
2020
|
1831
|
1907
|
German
|
1676
|
Spanish listening
|
2008
|
2026
|
1827
|
1912
|
German
|
1665
|
Spanish listening
|
2009
|
2019
|
1833
|
1929
|
German
|
1675
|
Spanish listening
|
2010
|
2028
|
1838.25
|
1927
|
Physics
|
1685
|
Spanish listening
|
2011
|
2026
|
1838.05
|
1917
|
Chemistry
|
1674
|
Spanish listening
|
As I did last year, I wonder why the fact that these Latin students have done about ten percent better than the average subject test taker, and about 35 percent better than the average SAT taker doesn't lead to larger numbers of Latin students. One minor curiosity is that these Latin subject test takers score better (by an average of 15 points) than those who take the Math 2 subject test on the math part of the general SAT, where they score about the same as Chemistry students and only some 35 points, on average, below Physics students who do the best on that part of the SAT. I suppose these Latin subject test takers were mostly among the students who took two or three subject tests. A large majority of subject test takers took two or more tests. Whatever that may mean, there seems to be something about Latin itself, or about the sort of student who takes Latin seriously enough to do a Subject Test in it, or both, that sets this small group of subject test takers distinctly apart from all the rest.
Each annual report breaks down subject areas into six major groups: English, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences & history, foreign languages, and arts & music (which also includes computer related courses). I thought I'd see how foreign language students in general compared to others over the last six years in the total of their scores for Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing per number of years of study in any particular one of these subject areas. That led to the production of these six charts, including one for students taking AP or Honors courses. In these charts the subject areas are sorted in descending order by the mean of the scores for the six years.
One year of study:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Arts and Music
|
1495
|
1503
|
1502
|
1494
|
1505
|
1504
|
1500.5
|
Social Science & History
|
1386
|
1371
|
1379
|
1356
|
1378
|
1412
|
1380.33
|
Natural Sciences
|
1395
|
1380
|
1373
|
1349
|
1354
|
1379
|
1371.67
|
English
|
1365
|
1343
|
1310
|
1307
|
1353
|
1454
|
1355.33
|
Mathematics
|
1358
|
1334
|
1286
|
1266
|
1326
|
1421
|
1331.83
|
Foreign Languages
|
1322
|
1321
|
1314
|
1318
|
1321
|
1328
|
1320.67
|
Two years of study:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Arts and Music
|
1503
|
1509
|
1507
|
1495
|
1519
|
1522
|
1509.17
|
Social Science & History
|
1429
|
1429
|
1435
|
1423
|
1432
|
1439
|
1431.17
|
English
|
1426
|
1411
|
1438
|
1402
|
1423
|
1454
|
1425.67
|
Foreign Languages
|
1407
|
1412
|
1414
|
1413
|
1420
|
1424
|
1415
|
Natural Sciences
|
1409
|
1404
|
1402
|
1390
|
1400
|
1410
|
1402.5
|
Mathematics
|
1382
|
1365
|
1368
|
1346
|
1372
|
1397
|
1371.67
|
Three years of study:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Foreign Languages
|
1540
|
1545
|
1544
|
1536
|
1548
|
1548
|
1543.5
|
Arts and Music
|
1509
|
1519
|
1516
|
1509
|
1533
|
1531
|
1519.5
|
Social Science & History
|
1465
|
1474
|
1473
|
1463
|
1475
|
1477
|
1471.17
|
Natural Sciences
|
1433
|
1440
|
1442
|
1438
|
1451
|
1454
|
1443
|
English
|
1396
|
1400
|
1403
|
1401
|
1408
|
1397
|
1400.83
|
Mathematics
|
1385
|
1386
|
1390
|
1391
|
1400
|
1396
|
1391.33
|
Four years of study:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Foreign Languages
|
1657
|
1673
|
1669
|
1654
|
1681
|
1681
|
1669.17
|
Arts and Music
|
1588
|
1603
|
1596
|
1586
|
1612
|
1616
|
1600.17
|
Natural Sciences
|
1555
|
1577
|
1564
|
1561
|
1580
|
1586
|
1570.5
|
Social Science & History
|
1541
|
1553
|
1548
|
1538
|
1554
|
1557
|
1548.5
|
Mathematics
|
1521
|
1543
|
1540
|
1533
|
1550
|
1554
|
1540.17
|
English
|
1528
|
1539
|
1535
|
1523
|
1541
|
1545
|
1535.17
|
Five or more years of study:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Foreign Languages
|
1681
|
1681
|
1704
|
1681
|
1706
|
1699
|
1692
|
Natural Sciences
|
1644
|
1652
|
1683
|
1653
|
1671
|
1665
|
1661.33
|
Mathematics
|
1638
|
1643
|
1669
|
1640
|
1657
|
1652
|
1649.83
|
Social Science & History
|
1607
|
1605
|
1640
|
1609
|
1621
|
1609
|
1615.17
|
Arts and Music
|
1592
|
1585
|
1597
|
1584
|
1600
|
1595
|
1592.17
|
English
|
1585
|
1570
|
1607
|
1580
|
1587
|
1566
|
1582.5
|
Students who reported taking an AP or Honors course in these subject areas:
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Foreign Languages
|
1721
|
1731
|
1733
|
1714
|
1738
|
1736
|
1728.83
|
Mathematics
|
1704
|
1713
|
1715
|
1704
|
1729
|
1731
|
1716
|
Natural Sciences
|
1705
|
1714
|
1715
|
1702
|
1723
|
1724
|
1713.83
|
Arts and Music
|
1695
|
1704
|
1711
|
1689
|
1710
|
1707
|
1702.67
|
Social Science & History
|
1676
|
1687
|
1690
|
1677
|
1698
|
1701
|
1688.17
|
English
|
1663
|
1674
|
1678
|
1665
|
1686
|
1687
|
1675.5
|
Foreign language students start off at the bottom of the barrel in year one. By the third year, they have taken the lead and stay in it solidly the rest of the way. The numbers clearly indicate that the long-term, serious pursuit of a foreign language is associated with significantly higher critical reading, math and writing scores on the SAT to a greater extent than the long-term, serious pursuit of any of the other five subject areas. The fact that this information has been out there for years, needing only to be looked at and put together, makes a person wonder about either the bona fides or the intelligence of those who are behind such things as NCLB, CCSS, STEM, and other schemes for what passes for school reform and improvement in this day and age, all of which mention foreign language instruction either not at all or only as a kind of amusing hobby draining energy and time from important subjects like English. It is indeed curious that if one were to be limited to five choices of subject areas to teach or to study, this particular set of data logically would dictate the elimination of English.
Probably the distinction between required and elective courses and the prevailing policies of most schools have much to do with these results. Most schools probably require things like mathematics and English for all four high school years, natural sciences and the social sciences for maybe three or four, while foreign languages and the arts are either pure electives or something in between (e.g., perhaps two years are required for kids intending to go to college; or maybe everybody has to take a semester or two of music or art or technology or human development or something of that sort). English and math have been the focus of the high-stakes testing program in Pennsylvania known as the PSSA so they tend to get an awful lot of attention from the education department, school administrators and teachers. Foreign languages don't get a lot of attention. And that is a good thing, given the tendency of the officious know-it-alls in PDE, PSEA and colleges of education to pump out enormous quantities of obfuscatory balderdash on whatever half-baked fad their beady little brains happen to have become focused on. In other words foreign language teachers have the advantage of not being impeded by the burden of figuring out how to deal with a confusing array of such things as "assessment anchors" (with their reporting categories, references, descriptors, cross-walking, eligible content, sample items, etc., etc.) unlike English teachers who have to deal with that whole mess and somehow either use it or pretend to use it in order to teach in such a way as to reduce the odds of the sort of student failure on the PSSA tests that could result in unpleasant consequences for the teacher. Perhaps if good English teachers had more time to actually teach English, students who have to take English for four years might do a bit better on the SAT. Another big factor behind these results is probably the self-selection thing. Naturally subjects which all students are constrained to take will have a higher concentration of the unwilling and unmotivated type of student who doesn't read, think or learn very well. Non-mandatory subjects will tend to have more students characterized by willingness and personal motivation who have some confidence in their ability to do well because they have acquired some reading, thinking and learning skills, or in the case of the arts and music because they have more than ordinary artistic and musical talent. A third part of the probable explanation for these kind of results is simply that there is something about the study of foreign languages that tends to improve a person's mind to a greater extent and in more ways than the study of any other subject.
The next logical question for me then was to work out which language is associated with the probability of scoring above average on the three SAT tests. Here I've limited my inquiry to the languages offered at my school, one of which (German) is only offered by distance learning, and may in fact have fallen by the wayside by now. [Just as a side note: Chinese and Hebrew students tend to do about as well and sometimes a bit better than Latin students: the Chinese students tend to be really good on the math part of the test, while the Hebrew students, like Latin students, tend to do about the same on all three segments of the test]. A few years ago, one of my better Latin students took this course and did well; he majored in German in college and is currently doing post-graduate work somewhere in Germany. Here are two charts showing first the sets of critical reading, mathematics and writing scores for the past six years for Latin, German, French and Spanish, with the basic national average added so as to make it obvious where each stacks up relative to it, and second the enrollment trends for each of these four languages as measured by the number of students who reported taking at least some quantity of coursework in each language.
Subject
|
Total mean scores
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Latin
|
1655
|
1667
|
1670
|
1657
|
1678
|
1668
|
1665.83
|
German
|
1583
|
1595
|
1599
|
1594
|
1600
|
1596
|
1594.5
|
French
|
1557
|
1569
|
1571
|
1562
|
1582
|
1575
|
1569.33
|
National average
|
1500
|
1509
|
1509
|
1511
|
1511
|
1518
|
1509.67
|
Spanish
|
1496
|
1503
|
1505
|
1494
|
1510
|
1507
|
1502.5
|
Subject
|
total number of students in thousands
| ||||||
2011
|
2010
|
2009
|
2008
|
2007
|
2006
|
mean
| |
Latin
|
76
|
77
|
77
|
72
|
86
|
87
|
79.17
|
German
|
53
|
53
|
54
|
52
|
61
|
64
|
56.17
|
French
|
220
|
214
|
214
|
205
|
236
|
247
|
222.67
|
total test takers
|
1647
|
1547
|
1530
|
1518
|
1494
|
1465
|
1533.5
|
Spanish
|
905
|
890
|
882
|
820
|
870
|
852
|
869.83
|
There is perhaps some irony in the circumstance that the number of Latin students (who routinely score about ten percent better than the national average) has decreased by about 11,000, and the number of Spanish students (who routinely score a little under the national average) has increased by about 53,000. Pretty obviously something besides a familiarity with this data and an appreciation for the value of high SAT scores has been driving curriculum, staffing and enrollment decisions.
In my school (with a total student population in four grades of about 600), the enrollment in Latin IV is -0-, in Latin III -3-, in Latin II -6-, in Latin I -11-, in French IV -0-, in French III -0-, in French II -10- and in French I -25-, in Spanish IV -6-, in Spanish III -16-, in Spanish II, -60-, in Spanish I -90-. We have no AP or Honors courses in foreign languages. Half, or slightly more (at least last year), of our senior class goes to college. With the rather low enrollment in the third and fourth years it appears that some of our students are not making the most of their opportunities.
