The Nation - News from Feb. 11, 1987

Declaring that “we have to do better,” Education Secretary William J. Bennett reported that college entrance scores held nearly steady last year and the high school dropout rate increased slightly. Bennett, in releasing the department’s fourth annual “report card” on the nation’s schools, said that the statistics indicate “a little gain, a little slippage.” In California, average student scores remained at 904 in 1985 and 1986 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, on a scale of 400 to 1,600. The dropout rate fell as the number of students graduating in the state increased from 63.2% to 65.8% from 1984 to 1985.