Across the Nation

to blame for drop

in SAT scores?

A small but noticeable decline in scores on the newly expanded SAT exam has some wondering whether fatigue is affecting students’ performance — an issue that could prompt the College Board to adjust the test.

Possible changes to how the SAT is administered were the primary topic at a meeting Friday in New York City of the College Board’s SAT advisory committee. Some guidance counselors have called for the College Board, which owns the exam, to let students take separate sections on separate days.

The new SAT, which debuted in March 2005, now officially lasts three hours, 45 minutes, but takes longer if instructions and breaks are included.

"Right now, it’s longer than the GRE, the LSAT and the GMATs, and those are all taken by college students or college graduates,” said Brad MacGowan, a guidance counselor at Newton North High School in Massachusetts, who has asked the College Board to let students split up the exam.

Counting tests taken through January, scores for the upcoming college freshman class are down between four and five points on the combined math and critical reading sections, according to the College Board, which owns the SAT. Full-year numbers are expected to show a "small additional decline.”

Former Qwest exec ignored NSA request because of privacy

WASHINGTON — Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday. For a second day, the former National Security Agency director defended the spy agency’s activities.

In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.

"Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act,” attorney Herbert J. Stern said from his Newark, N.J., office.

The Bush administration is facing new questions about civil liberties after the disclosure that the NSA collected information on millions of Americans’ everyday telephone calls.<