COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina's SAT scores dropped three points for the class of 2004, making it the lowest state score in the country, state Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum announced Friday.

The nearly 23,000 high school seniors who took the college entrance exam scored an average of 986 out of a possible 1,600, she said.

The drop comes after five years of progress. Tenenbaum said the state has the highest improvement in the country, including 32-point increase since she took office in 1999.

"You are going to have years that you dip," Tenenbaum said, though, she said it was difficult to explain why. "There really is not one factor you can pinpoint."

The private company that oversees the SAT will officially release results nationwide on Tuesday. But Tenenbaum, who is running to replace U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, said she jumped ahead of schedule because the information already had been leaked to the media.

Tenenbaum did not know who leaked the information, but said she was confident it was not from anyone in her agency.

"It's unfortunate that this is occurring the same year I am seeking another political office, and we anticipate negative ads being made," said Tenenbaum, a Democrat.

Education is always a political hot-button issue in South Carolina, but she did not think the three-point drop in SAT scores would hurt her Senate campaign.

"People will have to conclude that 32 points is an excellent record," she said.

Tenenbaum's Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, said the state's education system is in trouble and it needs some new ideas.

"I'm not going to blame her for the problems. The only thing I'd blame her for is being very slow to listen to new ideas that give students more choices of learning environments and address the different learning styles of students," DeMint said.

DeMint has campaigned on the idea of expanding school choices to parents and allowing schools to specialize. Tenenbaum opposes any proposals, such as school vouchers for private schools, that could take money away from public schools.

"If she wants to build her platform for the Senate on education, she's building it on shifting sand because we've got a lot of work to do," DeMint said.

Tenenbaum said the state has been pinched by several years of budget cuts, but students have continually improved performance on all standardized tests taken in the state.

She also revealed in advance that elementary school students improved their scores on the state's Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, which was taken this past spring. The official results will be released Sept. 8.

"I don't think teachers are working harder in their whole careers than they're working now," Tenenbaum said.

On the SAT, the state's average math score decreased one point to 495, while the reading score dropped two points to 491, she said. Possible scores on each section range from 200 to 800.

"This is obviously something that you don't celebrate," said Paul Krohne, director of the South Carolina School Boards Association. "We don't ... consider the minor dip in the scores a knockout punch at all."

Education advocates said the state has worked to improve student performance on the SAT.

The General Assembly has funded a preliminary test to SAT, called the PSAT, for all 10th graders and many school districts offer SAT preparation classes, hire consultants and include test preparation into day-to-day classwork.

"I do believe parents think schools have improved in South Carolina and we have the data to back that up," Tenenbaum said.

Gov. Mark Sanford's office was briefed on the SAT scores in advance.

"No one in the governor's office leaked this into the press," Sanford spokesman Will Folks said. The governor expressed concern that his education adviser Barbara Nielsen - Tenenbaum's Republican predecessor as education superintendent - had invited a member of the conservative think-tank Policy Council to attend the briefing.

"He certainly plans to have a conversation with her," Folks said. The real issue, he said, is not how the information was made public, but what the numbers show.

"Bouncing back and forth between next-to-last and now dead-last in the entire country again isn't progress - it's a sad reminder for many that our state isn't giving parents the choices they need in the education marketplace," Sanford said in a statement. "This administration is going to continue pushing for fundamental reforms to the current system that give parents more choices and kids more opportunities."