Grading Florida Schools

Each year Florida public schools use the FCAT, or Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, to measure students’ achievement of state standards in education. The FCAT results are part of a complex formula that is used to determine a letter grade, A-F, for each public school in the state.

Elementary and Middle Schools are graded on the basis of a point system, earning one point for each percent of students who score a 3 or above on reading, math, and science, or above 3.5 on the writing assessment portion.

Science questions were added to the FCAT in 2003, and became a component in school grade calculations in 2007.

Schools earn one point for each percent of students who make learning gains in reading or math. Learning gains are calculated by students making progress in any one of three ways:

1. Increase achievement level from previous year’s score.

2. Stay within high levels of 3, 4, and 5 scores.

3. Show more than one year’s growth from a previous score of 1 or 2. Note, this doesn’t include students who were held back the previous year.

Two other factors are utilized in calculating elementary and middle school’s letter grade. First, to be eligible for an “A”, 95% of the student population must be tested, 90% for grades 9-12. Next, at least half of the students who score in the lowest 25%, must show progress made from one year to the next or the school risks losing a whole letter grade.

Several changes to the utilized criteria include removing the rates of attendance, discipline, graduation and dropouts, along with adding a measure of progress for students with disabilities, ESOL, and those who are below grade level but making progress in learning.

Educators have long expressed concern over school grades. Ranking the students and educators of a school with a ‘failing’ letter grade propels a widely held misperception that all the students in that school are failing. More accurately, there are high performing students in every school and low performing students in every school. Case in point, the Palm Beach Post conducted an analysis of two “A” rated schools, in one, 33% of students had top reading scores and the other, which chooses its student body, 86% had top reading scores.

For Florida’s High Schools, the 2010/2011 school year brought change again to how these schools will earn grades. Using a new formula, which includes FCAT and Learning Gains as 50% of the calculation and non-FCAT components as the remaining 50%.

Non-FCAT components include specific calculations for the following; graduation rates, accelerated curriculum, postsecondary readiness, and growth or decline of the data measurements from one year to the next. Also, the percentage of graduation rates for students receiving a standard or special diploma in a 4 year time period, as well as the percentage of graduation rates for at-risk students. Students are considered at-risk because they didn’t score higher than a ‘2’ on the 8^th grade reading or math FCAT.

• Accelerated curriculum participation is described as students in 9^th -12^th grade who take AP, IB, AICE, or industry certification exams, as well as dual enrollment. The 9^th and 10^th grade students are factored in only if they pass the exams and/or are maintaining a “c” or higher in a dual enrollment course.
• Postsecondary readiness is measured by National exams like the SAT, ACT or CPT and calculated separately for each subject.
• Growth or decline is simply keeping track of each year’s progress or regress. Schools that show an annual increase in points receive additional points as a bonus. Schools that show performance decline by 10% will lose points.

In addition to the non-FCAT items, high schools that would earn an ‘A’ grade based on points must also meet a 75% graduation rate for at risk students, or show sufficient annual increases. A sufficient annual increase refers to 1% or more for schools that have an at-risk graduation rate of 65%. Those schools who have an at-risk graduation rate below 65% must show a 5% annual increase in order to meet the requirement for an “A”.

In addition, Florida must meet the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) federal standards, as every state does, to be in compliance. Many teachers, administrators, politicians, and parents have continued to criticize the grading system of both the state and NCLB as “setting schools up to fail” with standards of improvement that simply can’t be reached year after year.

What happens to the schools that are not improving based upon the standards set by the State of Florida? Florida schools with an “F” two years in a row, offer students vouchers to choose another school, public or private, effectively taking the funding away from the school with the poor grade.

Schools labeled “failing” in accordance with the federal NCLB criteria are given a few options for improvement. One is staff replacement. Another, use the funding for the public school labeled failing, to start up a charter school, which then is not held accountable to any federal regulations. Or, the choice can be made to hire a separate organization contract to run the school, effectively sliding into a blurred line of privatizing a public school.

The points and percentages add up to label schools. New legislation will soon be implemented to add up how the teachers are performing. With all this accountability being calculated for points and money, why isn’t Florida outranking other states?

Your comments, opinions and suggestions are welcome and requested. No time to talk? Vote me up or down please, Thanks!