The San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees received a presentation about the SAT and PSAT scores from Oct. 23 at the meeting Monday. SMCISD students received scores below the state and country averages across the board.
For the SAT, Eileen Grose, San Marcos High School associate principal, said San Marcos High School students received an average score of 898, which was below the state average of 920. The average across the United States was 973. There has also been a decrease in the mean score from Fall of 2022 to Fall of 2023 then again at Fall of 2024.
Grose said for the PSAT or the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the preliminary test that is taken before the SAT at the 11th grade level, SMCISD students also scored lower than the state and US average. SMCISD students’ mean score was 827. The state’s mean score was 909, and the US mean score was 949.
Grose discussed ways to improve scores.
“Some of the things that we should do, especially for National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, is to identify our top 25% … of our PSAT 10th grade testers and help them through solid tier-one instruction in the classroom through SAT vocabulary [and] use of our advisory time in order to get them the test-taking strategies that they need in order to be successful on their SAT test and hopefully get some scholarships,” Grose said.
Lacye Matejowsky, Secondary Curriculum and Instruction director, shared data for the PSAT for 8th and 9th graders. SMCISD 8th and 9th grade students received a mean score of 742, which was below the state average of 793 and the US average of 814.
SMCISD Board Trustee Miguel Arredondo said he knows there have been informal conversations about building into the highschool master calendar some SAT and ACT support, and he believes moving forward by investing strategically in that additional support could help close the gap between the state and the district.
SMCISD Board President Anne Halsey said there is a lot of work to do, adding that the grades have never been great but are also not getting better. She acknowledged that staff must find a solution within a limited budget and recommended designating specific times approximately once a week for some sort of formal test prep curriculum in lieu of allowing students to be office aids, for example.
“I don’t think we have a choice honestly but to do this,” Halsey said. “I think we need to take a real hard look at it and get it fixed now.”
Arredondo said he wanted to echo Halsey’s sentiment, adding that he didn’t want the program to be a choice during the advisory period as many students and youth would choose not to participate. He said now is the time to prioritize ‘high achievement.”
