For the fourth year in a row, Georgia public-school students outperformed their counterparts in the nation’s public schools on the SAT.

The mean score of 1077 Georgia students recorded was 39 points higher than the national average for public-school students.

According to a report issued Wednesday by the state Department of Education, Georgia’s public-school class of 2021 also recorded significant increases in scores compared to the class of 2020. The mean score for Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (ERW) rose from 532 in 2020 to 546 in 2021, and the mean for math rose from 511 in 2020 to 531 in 2021, for a total increase of 34 points in the average composite score.

“Despite the fact that part of their high-school education took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Georgia’s class of 2021 did an outstanding job on the SAT — both increasing scores and outperforming their counterparts in the nation’s public schools,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said.

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Thirty-eight percent of Georgia’s class of 2021 took the SAT at some point during high school. This percentage is lower than normal, given the impacts of the pandemic – including the cancellation of some test registrations and closure of some test centers in 2020 – and the temporary waiver of SAT/ACT score requirements for University System of Georgia admissions.

While the College Board does not release participation percentages at the national level, the raw numbers show a decline in participation nationally as well: 1.5 million students in the high school class of 2021 took the SAT at least once, down from 2.2 million in the class of 2020.

Wednesday’s news included only state-level test scores. The department said school and district-level scores will be released Friday.

This story available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.