Matthew Diemer discusses declining SAT scores and college readiness on Local 4 Live

Newly released SAT scores show that a growing number of students in Michigan may not be ready for the jump to college, reports WDIV Local 4. The latest scores show that only one in four 11th graders in the state are college-ready, compared to 26.6% in 2025 and roughly 35% of students a decade earlier.  

Marsal School Professor Matthew Diemer, whose research examines educational inequality and fairness of educational assessments, points to several potential contributors to declining scores, including economic pressures on families and the lasting effects of pandemic-related disruptions to schooling.

Although college admissions officers look at the SAT to determine a student’s college readiness, “It’s one piece of evidence, not the whole story,” says Diemer. He cites a number of other indicators that encompass college readiness, including the ability to self-regulate emotions, to plan, to organize, to collaborate with others, to work in teams, to figure out how to live on one’s own for the first time. Diemer notes that college readiness develops over many years and is shaped by students' educational opportunities and family resources—not simply their performance on a single examination.

Diemer also emphasizes that SAT performance reflects unequal access to educational opportunities, including experienced teachers, advanced coursework, private tutoring, and test preparation. Moreover, research has documented differential item functioning (DIF) on the SAT, in which certain test questions function differently across racial and socioeconomic groups, raising important questions about fairness and bias in standardized assessment.

“We should be collectively concerned about these scores sliding downward, but it is only one data point.”