Some bad news as high school students prepare to head back to school: SAT scores have taken a slight dip and the gap between minorities and their white and Asian-American counterparts is only increasing.

But the decrease isn’t as bad as you might fear. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the class of 2009 had an average score of 501 in critical reading, 493 in writing, and 515 in math. Of these three scores, only critical reading and writing experienced a drop from last year and it was only by a point each. However, it is worth noting that the reading score hasn’t been this bad since 1994 — though the SAT given then was considerably different from today’s SAT. (In the 90s, SAT scores could soar as high as 1600 and the test consisted of the oh-so-annoying analogy section, for example. The modern SAT did away with this favoring a new writing section and a score that only goes up to 800.)

Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a think tank, had this to say about the new data, “This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment.”

While I don’t think the two-point drop is worth worrying about, the widening gap between different ethnicities is concerning. While white and Asian students average in the 500s in all three sections, Hispanic and black students have stayed firmly in the 400s.

Citing poorer school districts as a reason why minority students have lower scores, Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board which oversees the administering of the STAT, said, “As a country, we must do better providing students of every background access to the best education.”

– Genevieve M. Blaber