Zero F schools: Polk superintendent breaks down district grade data for school board
Polk County Public Schools' Superintendent Frederick Heid updated the School Board on Tuesday on a more granular level about the district’s school grades released by the Florida Department of Education earlier this week.
The department had reported on Monday that Polk County Public Schools had received an overall C grade and that the school district placed in the lower 15% of districts statewide on recent Florida’s Assessment of Student Thinking (FAST) testing.
“The only scores that were reported were an assessment of student proficiency and some of the others were acceleration points, graduation rates, those that were outside of the learning gains components,” Heid said during the board’s workshop in Bartow. “It's quite impressive what our schools were able to do. And so, as a school district, our overall district grade is a C, yet we're only three percentage points away from a B, which is an improvement from where we were previous.”
This was the first year for a new system of district and school accountability for student achievement that favors progress monitoring over a single test result each school year.
The new FAST results will serve as a baseline for schools and districts to monitor progress. Poor grades will not result in penalties to the districts.
The new assessments are based largely on schools' performance in various achievement components, measured by performance on FAST.
Among Heid’s drill down on the data, he compared the district’s grades when he started as superintendent during the 2020-2021 school year to the most recent data release.
By comparison, the district had zero F schools in the state school grade data released Monday compared to eight F schools during his first year overseeing the district. Conversely, he said, the district now has nine A schools compared to three previously.
He pulled out the results of Elbert Elementary School FAST score, saying it went from an F to a C grade in one year and could not wait until learning gains were added during upcoming result because its grade could be even better.
“I am pleased to share that we continue to see schools improve, even in the midst of so many potential barriers to success," Heid said in an email to The Ledger on Tuesday. "The combination of a new assessment, the exclusion of learning gains from the school grade calculations, and elevated cut scores for reading and mathematics make the gains demonstrated by our students, staff and schools that much more impressive.”
The email also pointed out several more improvement in school grades, including the following:
Eliminated all “F” traditional public schools
Increased the number of “A” rated schools from three in 2021-22 to nine
Increased the number of “B” rated schools from seven in 2021-22 to 12
Increased the number of “C” rated schools from 43 in 2021-22 to 73
Reduced the number of “D” rated public schools from 42 in 2021-22 to 11
Elbert Elementary improved from an “F” in 2021-22 to a “C”
Davenport High School improved from a “D” to a “C” (Note: Davenport High’s grade was negatively impacted due to the absence of a graduation rate)
Daniel Jenkins Academy improved from a “C” to a “B”
Lake Gibson Middle improved from a “D” to a “C”
Lake Marion Creek Middle improved from a “D” to a “C”
Winston Academy improved from a “C” to an “A”
Brigham Academy improved from a “B” to an “A”
Chain of Lakes Elementary improved from a “C” to a “B”
Alturas Elementary improved from a “C” to a “B”
Sleepy Hill Elementary improved from a “C” to a “B”
Dundee Elementary improved from a “C” to a “B”
Wendell Watson Elementary improved from a “C” to a “B”
Inwood Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Lake Shipp Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Auburndale Central Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Davenport Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Kathleen Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Spook Hill Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Eagle Lake Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
James E. Stephens Academy improved from a “D” to a “C”
Socrum Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
Loughman Oaks Elementary improved from a “D” to a “C”
“Again, these improvements come during ongoing assessment changes and increased cut scores,” Heid said. “We are confident that we will continue to see steady progress with a heavy emphasis on making improvements in the areas of high school graduation rates, reading and math proficiency scores, and student attendance.”
At the school board meeting, he also noted that two schools have “adversely affected” the district’s graduation, including Tenoroc High School with a graduation rate of 67%, which he called “completely unacceptable.”
In March 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 1048 overhauling standardized testing as he had promised parents. However, the Florida Educators Association issued a statement saying the bill fell short on multiple promises by the governor. For one, the amount of testing is far more frequent than promised and does not eliminate a final test at the end of the school year.
“This is not what DeSantis promised, and most importantly it is not what is best for Florida’s students,” the FEA said. Among other FEA concerns, it requires four-year olds to sit for computer-based testing as public-school students from pre-K to 10th grade are now expected to complete the assessment.
Elementary schools only have English, math and science components, The Ledger previously reported. Middle schools have those, plus social studies and a middle school acceleration component. High schools have the English, math, science and social studies components, plus a graduation rate component and a "college and career acceleration" component.
In future years, student progress will become another graded component.
The Polk County district scored 384 points in the state's calculation, leading to its C grade. Of the 64 districts that were graded, only eight had lower scores: Bradford, DeSoto, Franklin, Hamilton, Hendry, Highlands, Putnam and Okeechobee. Fifty-five school districts had higher scores. Three districts did not receive grades.
The FAST testing regime increases frequency of its tests with three; one at the start of the school year, a second mid-year assessment and an end-of-year comprehensive FAST.
The testing program is based on how well students learned their subjects under DeSantis’ new B.E.S.T. (Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking) standards implemented by him via an executive order in 2019.
State standards shape the curriculum developed by districts for use in the classrooms and now must align with B.E.S.T., which replaced standards previously known as Common Core. The testing regime used to measure student outcomes through Common Core was the Florida Standard Assessment or FSA.
Local Polk Teachers Association union president Stephanie Yocum said via a text Wednesday that the previous FSA and now FAST are both “smoke and mirrors” designed “to punish public school students, educators, and districts.”
“School grades are nothing more than a smoke and mirror illusion that our state Legislature and leadership concocted almost 30 years ago to give a perception to the people of Florida that their public schools are failing their kids to push public accountable tax dollars into corporate charter and private schools which often line our state leaders' pockets,” Yocum wrote.
She pointed out that not all corporate-run charter and private schools receiving tax dollars are evaluated the same way regular public schools are graded. If they were, “Then we as taxpayers can truly have transparency in this broken, fixed system, and our public schools would best any of these other options with an equal playing field.”
Heid said in January, he would have a more comprehensive set of results including private, charter and parochial school data on student outcomes, which were not in the initial FDOE data release.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Polk school superintendent breaks down district grade data for board
