SAT Scores (Most Recent Administration)

Reporting year. For 2011-2024 this is the spring (ending) calendar year of the school year in the source's LONG_SCHOOL_YEAR; for 2004-2010 the source carries no year column and the filename publication year is used.

GOSA district code (FK to districts dimension): 3-digit zero-padded county/city codes or 7-digit charter codes. NULL on state-level rows.

GOSA school code, zero-padded to 4 characters (composite FK to schools dimension with district_code; not globally unique on its own). NULL on district- and state-level rows.

Demographic subgroup (FK to the global demographics dimension). Subgroup breakdowns exist only for 2004-2010; from 2011 onward the source publishes all-students rows only, so every 2011+ row is 'all'. The asian_pacific_islander key reflects the source's pre-1997 OMB combined Asian + Pacific Islander bucket (the bronze label is bare 'Asian', but no era publishes a separate Pacific Islander row and sibling GOSA reports use the explicit combined label) — it is NOT an Asian-only count, per data-cleaning-standards section 5b. race_unknown (no-response) carries data only in 2004; 2005-2007 publish the slot empty and 2008+ drop it.

SAT test component. Pre-redesign (scales in parentheses): reading (200-800; published as 'Verbal' until 2011, the same Critical Reading section, 2004-2016), mathematics (200-800, 2004-2016), writing (200-800, 2008-2016), verbal_math (V+M composite, 400-1600, 2004-2010), verbal_math_writing (V+M+W composite, 600-2400, 2008-2010, all-students only), combined (V+M+W composite, 600-2400, 2011-2016). Redesigned SAT (2016 onward): combined_test_score (Math+EBRW, 400-1600), math_section_score (200-800), evidence_based_reading_and_writing (200-800, 2016-2019 only), reading_test_score and writlang_test_score (GOSA-rescaled test scores, observed 180-338), essay_reading_score / essay_analysis_score / essay_writing_score (2-8) and essay_total (6-24, a GOSA-derived sum of the three essay dimensions, not an official College Board score). Old and redesigned components are distinct values because they measure on different scales.

Number of students tested. Float64, NOT Int64 — a documented exception to the integer-count convention (data-cleaning-standards section 16): 2016-2024 sources publish fractional counts on the combined_test_score component because GOSA reports it as the equal-weight mean of the three SAT section test-taker counts (Math, Reading, Writing & Language), not a headcount (e.g. (47+37+37)/3 -> 40.3 — exact thirds where published full-precision, rounded to one decimal from ~2020), and 2023-24 district counts are fractional throughout (e.g. 4159.3). Rounding to an integer would silently lose precision, so values are carried as published. 2004-2010 sources publish one count per (entity, demographic), repeated on each of that demographic's component rows; 2011-2024 publish true per-component counts. Either way, summing num_tested across test_component double-counts students — filter to one component for headcounts. A 0 means the source reported zero test-takers for that demographic (2004-2010 only).

Average SAT score. The scale varies by test_component (sections 200-800; verbal_math / combined_test_score 400-1600; combined / verbal_math_writing 600-2400; essay dimensions 2-8; essay_total 6-24), so this column carries no single value_min/value_max — the avg_score_within_component_scale quality check enforces the per-component ranges instead. reading_test_score and writlang_test_score are excluded from that check: GOSA publishes them on a rescaled axis (observed 180-338, consistent with 10x the College Board 10-40 test-score scale) with no clean published ceiling. Known source defects NULLed by the transform per data-cleaning-standards section 4b (rows and num_tested preserved): seven values above their component ceilings — the 2009 Carroll County district verbal_math_writing of 2751 (> 2400), and in 2010 Rockdale County High School (722:3052) verbal_math_writing=3114, verbal_math=2133, reading=1039, mathematics=1094, writing=981 plus Elberta Open Campus (676:3050) reading=819 (> 800) — and nine 2011-2015 writing averages below the 200 section floor (as low as 92, all small schools/districts). This revises the preserve-bronze default for those values; the per-component range check remains enforceable because of it. Extreme-but-conceivable values are preserved: Elberta Open Campus's 2010 verbal_math_writing of 2287 is within the 600-2400 scale and is carried as published (suspect — the same row's reading section is impossible — but not provably wrong itself).