SAT test scores out today show Georgia’s high school seniors are still less prepared for college than the nation as a whole. The state scores trail the national average. Education officials say… it’s all about the achievement gap.

A lot of Georgia’s high school students take the SAT… 71 percent… and a third of them are minorities. In fact, more African-Americans take the test here than in any other state in the country.

Dana Tofig with the GA Department of Education says that’s one of the reasons why our overall numbers don’t look so great. "The issue is we have an achievement gap… because we have such diverse population it has a bigger impact on our overall numbers."

Tofig says if you break it down by race, African-Americans in Georgia outscored those in other states and so did Georgia's Hispanic students.

Overall, Georgia seniors scored an average of 1460 out of 2400 points. That's down 6 points from last year. Nationwide scores were down 2 points.

Tags: education, Georgia Department of Education, Dana Tofig, SAT