BANGOR – Maine’s SAT scores for the high school Class of 2004 showed some positive trends despite falling short of the national average, according to the head of assessments for the Maine Department of Education.

The average verbal score of 504 in Maine is up three points from last year, while the average math score of 501 is up two points. The average cumulative score in Maine on the most widely taken college entrance exam, however, is still below the national average of 1,026.

But the nationwide numbers don’t tell the whole story, since 76 percent of Maine students in both public and private high schools took the SAT, compared to only 48 percent nationally, said Brud Maxcy of the state’s department of education.

“The more kids you have taking the test, the more you widen the diversity of students. The more diverse the population, the more likely you are to have students who are not as prepared as others,” he said.

In addition, Maine encourages students who may not have taken college preparatory courses to take the SAT, Maxcy said. “We don’t want to be in the position of discouraging students from taking the SATs because we’re not sure they’ll score well,” he said. “We’d rather have more students take the SATs and have a lower average.”

Despite increasing by 10 percent to 20 percent the number of students taking the test over the last decade, Maine SAT scores still have gone up an average of 8 points on the verbal section and 11 on the math portion in 10 years, he added.

Nationally, the average cumulative score of 1,026 was the same as for the Class of 2003. Scores on the verbal section rose 1 point to 508 while math scores fell 1 point to 518. The verbal and math sections are graded on a 200-800 point scale.

The stagnant scores nationally were something of a disappointment after a 6-point jump last year from 2002 that produced a 36-year high. But the College Board, which owns the test and released the scores Tuesday, said it was good news that more students are taking the test and signaling they hope to attend college, even if that may have weighed down average results.

Other data from Maine indicate that:

. The average verbal score for boys was 512, up 5 points from last year, while their average math score was 525, up 6 points from last year.

. For girls, the average verbal score was 497, unchanged from last year, while their math score was 480, down 3 points.

. Almost 55 percent of SAT takers are female, backing up the fact that more girls are going on to college.

. The PSAT apparently is good practice for the SAT. Students who took the PSAT as sophomores and then took the SAT as seniors scored, on average, 519 in verbal and 520 in math, while students who didn’t take the PSAT received 471 in verbal and 465 in math. In October, through a partnership with the College Board, the Maine Department of Education is making it possible for all 10th-graders to take the PSAT as part of a statewide effort to have each student see that college is a possibility.

“The department isn’t complacent about test scores, whether it’s the Maine Educational Assessment or the College Board,” Maxcy said. “We want to continue to see our students improve and we’re looking at those kinds of strategies that are needed to continue improvement.”

Maxcy pointed out that the College Board has indicated that while the SAT can be used to identify trends in the college-bound population, it “should never be used alone for comparisons because demographics and other nonschool factors can have a strong effect on scores.”