Not smart enough?  

I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around the latest national increases in overall SAT scores. I always understood that they score different individual tests differently depending on how test takers score. But if the test takers themselves are part of the metric, how can the average score go up? I don't doubt that statisticians could find out whether people were getting smarter by looking at answers to individual questions, but I was surprised to hear that the average scores changed. Can somebody assure me that this isn't a scam on the part of the people who put out the scores? My confidence isn't exactly inspired by the way they inflated the whole scale a few years back...