AUGUSTA – The latest round of Maine student assessments – the nation’s first to use SATs as a measuring stick for high school juniors – shows a slippage in scores, but state officials said Thursday the drop was anticipated.

And Education Commissioner Susan Gendron even found good news in the scores for tests given last spring to students who will graduate in 2007: They didn’t go down as much as expected.

For the first time, Maine used SATs in place of the Maine Educational Assessments to measure student progress in the third year of high school. Maine also became the first state to use the SAT to meet its Grade 11 assessment requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

On a scale that runs from 200 to 800 points, Maine juniors last spring scored 443 in critical reading, 444 in mathematics and 435 in writing in their SATs.

Education officials expected to see results slip because 95 percent of the juniors, instead of 73 percent who had opted in the past to take the SATs, took the assessments. But the scores didn’t dip to the extent state officials had anticipated.

“It wasn’t that steep a slide,” said Dan Hupp, SAT initiative coordinator and math specialist in the Department of Education.

Gendron said she anticipates that “In three or four years, our scores will be right back where they were when just 75 percent of the students were tested.”

State officials said juniors’ SAT scores between last spring and the previous year cannot be accurately compared because so many more students – including many who did not necessarily anticipate going to college – took the tests last spring.

Maine’s statewide scores were much closer to national averages when only 73 percent of the juniors were taking them. The newest scores remained below the state’s own goals.

Gendron said federal education officials are looking with favor at Maine’s switch to SATs to measure student progress, although she acknowledged there have been “some hurdles and bumps along the way.”

This summer, the federal Education Department rejected Maine’s decision to adopt the SAT as a replacement for its academic performance assessment for 11th graders and issued financial sanctions. But now it is encouraging the state to move forward, and Gendron said formal approval of the change is expected before the end of the school year.

Maine’s switch to the SATs has also prompted inquiries from other states, including New Mexico, Missouri and Colorado, Gendron said.

The commissioner believes the switch to the SAT is having a positive impact on students, who didn’t understand the relevance of the MEAs but take the SATs “very seriously.”

Some students who never seriously thought of going on to college may reconsider when they see scores showing they can compete with college-bound students.

“We think it’s changing the thinking of many students in their senior year,” the commissioner said.

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