Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Students might need higher SAT scores for scholarships
High school students who want Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship — which thousands use to pay bills at state universities — would need to earn higher SAT scores to qualify for the financial award starting in 2021, under legislation a Florida Senate panel passed Wednesday.
To qualify for the top award, which pays 100 percent of tuition and fees, students would need a combined math and reading SAT score of 1330 out of 1600, up from 1290, according to the bill’s requirements. Qualifying for the second-tier award, which covers 75 percent of those costs, would mean a combined score of just above 1200, up from 1170.
Earning a 1330 on the current SAT exam is equivalent to a 1290 on the exam given before 2016, according to the College Board, which makes the SAT.
So in recent years, Florida students have been earning the scholarships with scores lower than what the state intended, said Sen. Kelli Stargel, RLakeland, the bill’s sponsor, during the Senate’s education committee meeting Wednesday.
If the bill (SB 190) passes the Florida Legislature, “ultimately … it would be a little more difficult” to snag a Bright Futures scholarship, Stargel said.
In 2018, the state gave out more than 40,000 Bright Futures awards to new high school graduates, and paid tuition and fees, or part of them, for a total of more than 103,000 students. A year of tuition and fees at Florida’s 12 universities averages about $6,100.
The bill was prompted by the redesigned SAT, which debuted in 2016, and an existing state law that requires Bright Futures winners to have SAT scores that meet certain national percentiles, according to a staff analysis of the bill.
The scores and percentile rankings listed in the current Bright Futures law were based on the 2010 SAT and no longer match the test students take. The law, for example, says the top-award winners need SAT scores that rank them at or above the 89th percentile nationally — but 1290 on the current exam is at the 86th percentile, College Board data shows. A score of 1330 is at the 89th percentile.
The law also says the second-tier award requires an SAT score at the 75th percentile, and on the new exam that’s slightly higher than a 1200, not 1170.
So Stargel’s bill requires the Florida Department of Education to adjust the scores to match those percentiles. The changes to Bright Futures would take effect in the 2020-21 school year.
The plan is return to “what the benchmarks were when Bright Futures was originally established,” Stargel said during the committee meeting. “It was getting much easier to reach those percentiles.”
Students can use ACT scores — the nation’s other college admissions exam — to earn Bright Futures scholarships, too. The law says they must be equivalent to the SAT scores.
The top score required for the ACT — 29 — does not not look likely to change, however, even if the bill passes the full Legislature, and the one needed for the second-tier award could drop by a point to 25 out of 36 from the current 26, according to a report from the College Board that documents which ACT scores are equivalent to marks on its exam.
Sen. Janet Cruz, DTampa, asked during Wednesday’s meting if the change would “disproportionately effect the minority community?”
Stargel said she didn’t have that data, but a report from the College Board shows SAT scores for black and Hispanic students in Florida lag behind those of Asian and white students, with the gap between Asian and black students at about 200 points.
To earn Bright Futures, students also need good grades and community service hours, among other requirements.
The bill, which does not have a House companion, has two more committee stops in the Senate. The proposal also would give students five years after high school graduation — instead of the current two — to start using a Bright Futures award.