West Virginia SAT scores show improvement

The president of the West Virginia Education Association says he’s encouraged by how the Mountain State’s students did on the SAT this year.

“We’re doing some really great things in public education in West Virginia,” Dale Lee said of the results.

Overall, numbers from The College Board showed West Virginia’s students improved in core subject areas of reading, writing and math on the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) compared to the previous year’s test results while, at the same time nationally, students showed no gains or declines.

In all subjects, the state’s average was better than the national average, according to the state Department of Education.

The average math score on the SAT in West Virginia was 503 compared with 501. The average state reading score was 515 compared with 492. The average writing score was 497 in West Virginia compared with 478 nationally.

Altogether, the results showed more than 42 percent of West Virginia’s SAT takers met benchmarks for college and career preps while the number was 39 percent nationally.

“We just have to take that — the good news, the positive news — and expand on it and reach more and more students,” Lee said. “We’re never going to stop trying to expand that to where we reach, I say, every child.”

Fewer students took the SAT in 2014 in West Virginia than in 2013.

Most high school students in West Virginia take the ACT.