Fayette County public schools are known for their quality education and high student test scores. Those high scores continued in 2011 with Fayette students scoring even higher in the SAT tests, besting their previous score by nine points, the state’s score by 95 points and the national average by 50 points.
The 2011 SAT scores also had all Fayette high schools scoring in the top 30 percent of all Georgia schools, with McIntosh tallying the 17th highest score out of 434 schools and with Starr’s Mill at 23rd, Whitewater at 66th, Fayette County at 71st and Sandy Creek at 132nd.
School system spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach said the county’s 2011 graduates scored an average of 9 points higher than the county SAT average from 2010. That 1,550-point average topped the state by 95 points and the nation by 50 points, Berry-Dreisbach said. Fayette’s rise in test scores comes as state and national averages fell, she added.
Berry-Dreisbach said a breakdown of the school system’s scores showed Fayette students averaging 520 points in the critical reading, 525 points in the mathematics and 505 points in the writing component, for a total of 1,550 points. A perfect score on the SAT is 2,400 points.
“Fayette outscored the state and nation in all test sections,” Berry-Dreisbach said. “The county’s score is 35 points above the state and 23 points above the nation in critical reading, 38 points above the state and 11 points above the nation in mathematics and 32 points above the state and 16 points above the nation in writing.”
Test score results show that Fayette’s five high schools scored in the top 30 percent of the 434 schools with students taking the test. But it is actually better than that.
Berry-Dreisbach said McIntosh and Starr’s Mill finished in the top 4 and 5 percent, respectively, with average scores of 1,630 and 1,611. Whitewater had an average score of 1,506 and posted in the top 15 percent while Fayette County averaged 1,491 and ranked in the top 16 percent and Sandy Creek, with an average score of 1,428, finished in the top 30 percent, she said.
That gave McIntosh the 17th highest average score followed by Starr’s Mill at 23rd, Whitewater at number 66, Fayette County at 71 and Sandy Creek at number 132, Berry-Dreisbach said.
Berry-Dreisbach said it is important to note that many of the schools on the list had 100 or fewer students tested compared to Fayette, which had between 209 and 371 test-takers at each school.
Leading the statewide pack in top SAT scores along with Fayette were schools in Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Forsyth and DeKalb counties. The school with the highest overall SAT score of 1,914 was the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology in Lawrenceville.
