As colleges and universities continue to reinstate standardized testing admissions processes, the Houston Independent School District has seen SAT participation rates return to pre-COVID levels, but average test scores have continued to slip over the course of 2024. The Houston Chronicle reported that the average composite score fell 9 points to 929 from 2023 to 2024. Those lower scores come on top of a 30-point decline following the first year of the COVID pandemic—with math scores seeing the most drastic decline based on HISD’s data.
This trend is certainly concerning, but it isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm. Additional context is needed to make sense of these numbers—and how test prep helps students succeed.
How Houston Compares to State and National Scores
Houston’s falling test scores follow a larger national trend. According to the College Board, the company that creates and administers the SAT, test scores have declined 43 points from the 2018-2019 to 2023-2024 school years. It is important to note that the College Board’s reported numbers, unlike HISD’s report, only capture the scores of high school graduates, meaning the scores could be lower nationally.
That said, HISD’s 929 average still lags significantly behind Texas’s 971 average and the national average of 1,024 in 2024.
This problem also extends outside of HISD, however. The Houston Chronicle reported in 2023 that, according to the Texas Education Agency, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD also falls below the state average—as do multiple schools around the Houston-area.
Why Scores Could Be Declining
Throughout the nation, learning loss following the pandemic, increased absenteeism, and lower literacy rates appear to be culminating in falling scores across many assessments. SAT scores have also fallen by over 40 points for Black students and nearly 60 points for Hispanic students in HISD, highlighting the long-standing racial inequalities in college entrance exams, which appear to have been worsened by the pandemic. Low-income students, specifically, were disproportionately impacted by COVID. As a result of these trends, HISD and many other districts have focused on fundamental skills to improve standardized state testing, which often came at the expense of prepping for the SAT and ACT.
Additionally, all HISD high school juniors took the SAT in March 2024, marking the first time all students participated in SAT School Day since 2019. As many universities transitioned to being test optional during the pandemic, many students who took the exam were the ones who were better prepared for it. Because more students took the exam in 2024, that may have played a role in the lower average score as well.
What Schools (and Parents) Can Do
While these declining scores are concerning, it’s important to note that only 23 schools saw improved total scores out of the 180 Houston schools with data available for five years, and six of those schools are in HISD. Those increases might be the result of HISD’s shifting priorities. To address falling SAT scores, HISD has increased its focus on SAT and college readiness, making SAT test prep a part of its English III and Algebra II curriculum as well as hosting SAT Boot Camps ahead of the SAT School Day near campuses with higher needs.
The school district’s emphasis on test prep highlights something The Enrichery has always advocated for: adequate and repeated test prep is essential to doing well on the SAT and ACT. In fact, our students see an average increase of 150 to 200 points after completing our 4-month SAT prep program—and we offer one-on-one coaching for Pre-ACT/SAT Basics for 9th and 10th-grade students. The last day to sign up for our prep program is November 22 if your student plans on taking the March 2026 SAT, so contact us today to sign up!
