re: I am the Department of Education: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

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From their site, it looks like SAT scores about being linked.

The SAT is not norm referenced to my knowledge.

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It is. And it's been renormed a few times (changes in sections and scores), but I believe it's equated every year to make better comparisons across years.

I think a major issue with the SAT and ACT is the distribution of test takers. The number of test takers is on an upward trend; I would imagine this is largely comprised of students who may not have taken it before, which brings the scores down to some degree.

I need to look again, but in grad school I looked at the distributions across years, and I noticed large increases in the percentage of Hispanic test-takers. While their quantitative scores were stable and pretty high, their verbal was not, probably due partially to language, not necessarily aptitude.