Florida schools received 2015 grades Friday. Education officials are calling the results a “new baseline.”
This is the first batch of results from the Florida Standards Assessment, which mostly replaced the FCAT last year. The transition was bumpy and the state also changed its grading system. The new grade scale did not account for student improvement since there’s nothing to compare it to from the previous year. Leon County Superintendent Jackie Pons says the test was more difficult, but he’s happy with the district’s performance.
“The state average was 78, we were 87," Pons says. We’ve raised our African American graduation rates 25 points in the last five years. Now, our African American rate is as high as the state average, we wanna get that as high as the rest of our averages in Leon County.”
Leon and Wakulla Counties received “A”s, while Hamilton and Jefferson Counties received “D”s. Gadsden County received an incomplete, meaning fewer than 95% of students were tested.