Georgia public school students again beat national average on SAT

2019 results also bring positive news in the area of equity

For the second year in a row, Georgia public school students outperformed their counterparts in the nation’s public schools on the SAT, recording a mean score of 1048, nine points higher than the mean for U.S. public schools.

Georgia outperformed the nation’s public schools by nine points in Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (ERW) and performed on par with their national counterparts in math.

The state’s public-school students did experience slight decreases in scores, which mirrored similar decreases nationally.

Georgia’s SAT participation rose to 67 percent of public-school graduates in the class of 2019, up from 66 percent in 2018 and 59 percent in 2017.

“I’ll put it simply: I’m proud of the teachers and students in Georgia’s public schools,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “While we would of course like to see an increase in scores every year, I’m still pleased to see us well above the national average even as participation increases. For the second year, our students beat the national average on a test that was once used to label Georgia as ‘last in the nation’ in education. In the same year, they recorded an all-time-high graduation rate and increases in NAEP and Georgia Milestones scores. I’m feeling optimistic about the future of public education in Georgia, and grateful for our educators and students who make it possible.”

Equity & Subgroup Performance

Georgia’s 2019 scores also brought positive news in the area of equity.

Black students in Georgia’s public-school class of 2019 recorded a mean composite score of 952, well above the national mean of 921, even as their participation increased by 1.7 percent. Georgia’s Hispanic or Latino students recorded a mean composite score of 1016, well above the national mean of 967, even with a 16.3 percent increase in participation.

Two years ago, the 2017 SAT results set a new baseline for year-to-year comparisons. Reports prior to 2017 were based on the old SAT, which had a different score scale and different benchmarks. The 2017, 2018, and 2019 SAT scores are comparable. Comparisons to 2016 or earlier are not valid.

School and district-level data will be publicly released at a later date.