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Fewer Collier County high school students are taking the SAT to apply to colleges, but the students are still outpacing their peers statewide.

Collier’s SAT verbal, math and writing mean scores for students taking the test in 2007-08 were 503, 511 and 488, respectively. The scores are higher than the state average of 496 verbal, 497 math and 481 writing.

The numbers are also an improvement over the scores of the students taking the SAT in 2006-07. Collier students taking the test during 2007-08 saw their average scores jump by nine points in verbal, six points in writing and 12 points in math.

“It is a common phenomenon that when participation rates go down, mean scores go up,” said Chief Instructional Officer Martha Hayes in a memorandum to Superintendent Dennis Thompson.

A perfect score under the SAT is 2,400. The test has three sections — writing, critical reading and math — and each section is worth 800 points. The SAT is a test designed to measure aptitude for success in college freshmen courses.

When broken down by race, 29 fewer white students in Collier County and 31 fewer black students took the SAT. More Hispanic students in Collier County took the SAT in 2007-08. More than 260 Hispanic students took the exam, an increase of 33 over the 213 students that took the test the previous year.

White and black students improved in all areas of the test, while Hispanic students improved in the verbal and math sections of the test. Black students saw the largest jump in mean scores. Verbal mean scores for black students went up 32 points to 450, while writing mean scores increased 15 points to 425. Math mean scores increased 21 points to 433.

Hispanic students saw a 3 point increase in the verbal mean, to 473, while the math mean increased to 469, a gain of one point. Hispanic students lost five points on the writing portion of the test, bringing the mean to 457 for the 2007-08 test.

White students increased their verbal score by 11, to 516, while the writing score increased to 503, a gain of nine points. The math mean for white students increased by 16 points, to 531.

The scores also show that the higher the level of parental education, the higher the student SAT scores. Students who had parents with a graduate degree scored a mean combined score of 1,569, compared with the combined score of 1,457 of students whose parents have an associate’s degree or lower. Students whose parents have a bachelor’s degree earned a combined mean of 1,527.

In Collier, 1,291 students took the SAT in 2007-08, which is a participation rate of 49 percent. The number is lower than the 1,316 students who took the test in 2006-07, which represented a participation rate of 51 percent.

All of the high schools in Collier County saw their scores improve with the exception of two. Palmetto Ridge High School saw its verbal mean score drop 12 points to 478; its writing mean score drop 14 points to 456; and its math mean score drop 15 points to 476.

Immokalee High School saw its verbal mean score drop 19 points from 2006-07 to 460. However, the school did improve its writing score by 1 point, to a mean of 465, and its math score by 3 points, to 459.

Palmetto Ridge also saw an increase in the number of students taking the SAT. Two hundred students took the test in 2007-08, compared with 180 students in 2006-07. But even though there were more students taking the test in 2007-08, Palmetto Ridge High School’s participation rate dropped by 5 percent, to 50 percent.

Gulf Coast High School increased its participation from 70 percent in 2006-07 to 71 percent in 2007-08. The school saw 11 more students take the SAT exam in 2007-08. Immokalee High also saw its SAT participation rate increase, going from 21 students, or 8 percent, in 2006-07, to 22 students, or 9 percent, in 2007-08.

Naples High School saw the largest improvement of all the high schools offering the SAT. Students at Naples improved their verbal and writing scores by 24 points, to 528 and 522, respectively. Naples High math mean scores went up 33 points, to 543, in 2007-08.

The same number of students at Naples High — 205 — took the test in 2006-07 and in 2007-08.